Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Ju stice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Les appelants, déclarés coupables sous divers chefs d’accusation relatifs à des opérations frauduleuses dans le contexte de l’affaire Cinar, échouent dans leurs appels des verdicts de culpabilité les visant et des peines qui leur ont été imposées.

Intitulé : Xanthoudakis c. R., 2020 QCCA 446
Juridiction . . . [more]

The increased utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) has been identified as giving rise to numerous privacy concerns.^[1] For illustration, “the data protection principle of limiting collection may be incompatible with the basic functionality of AI systems”. AI systems generally rely on large amounts of personal data to train and test algorithms, and limiting some of the data could lead to reduced quality and utility of the output.^[2]

Another issue is that organizations using AI for advanced data analytics may not know ahead of time how the information that is processed by an AI system will be used or . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

In Hicks and Winnipeg Exclusive Bus Tours Inc., Re, (Sept. 19, 2019), Doc. YM 2727-3941 (Can. Lab. Code Adj.) the arbitrator Bryan Schwartz was appointed by the federal Minister of Labour to hear a complaint of wrongful dismissal under the Canada Labour Code. The case provides a stark reminder to employers about the sufficiency of evidence necessary to support a claim of just cause for dismissal. . . . [more]

As I am writing this, everything else has been knocked out of the news and our consciousness by the emergence of COVID-19 as a pandemic.

As we struggle to cope with COVID-19 we are facing hard questions – sometimes choices – as members of our own communities, as Canadians, and as world citizens.

• How well does our existing infrastructure – health care, labour rights, social services – mitigate some of the impact of the virus?
• Did our civic governments take enough notice of the earlier warning signs of the pandemic and respond in time?
• Are we doing enough to protect

In person if necessary, but not necessarily in person…

The Superior Court of Justice in Ontario issued a notice on March 13, advising people not to go into any courthouse, if they have been advised to self-isolate in response to the growing COVID-19 pandemic. The courts remain open to the media and public (this may have changed since I wrote this…) but anyone who has COVID-19 symptoms, has been advised to self-isolate, or has travelled from an area under a travel advisory should stay away. This includes civil litigants and criminal defendants, who are advised to contact their lawyer or . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Ribeiro v Wright, 2020 ONSC 1829 (CanLII)

19 Most of our social, government and employment institutions are struggling to cope with COVID-19. That includes our court system. Despite extremely limited resources, we will always prioritize cases involving children. But parents and lawyers should be mindful of the practical limitations we are facing.

20 If a parent has a concern that COVID-19 . . . [more]

We’re in the midst of a medical emergency — and we’re in the midst of a legal emergency. (I almost wrote “middle of” in the preceding sentence, being too optimistic by far.) We are experiencing a true medical pandemic in the 2019 novel coronavirus crisis, affecting over 150 countries, including, of course, Canada. And we are subject to emergency declarations, giving governments unusual powers, at the provincial, territorial and local levels in Canada. Even as we accept that these responses, and will accept more stringent ones in the future, are necessary, we need to remember that we still have a . . . [more]

“How will COVID-19 change the legal industry and what will it look like After Coronavirus? Short answer: the coronavirus will turbocharge legal industry transformation. It will propel law into the digital age and reshape its landscape. The entire legal ecosystem will be affected—consumers, providers, the Academy, and the judicial system.” – Marc Cohen in the article “COVID-19 Will Turbocharge Legal Industry Transformation”

Marc Cohen explains that the timeline for digital transformation has been truncated. We will not see a permanent return to the old ways. “The coronavirus has turbocharged law’s move to a virtual workforce and distance learning. . . . [more]

We interrupt this program, as they say. Life has intervened, and many of us are working remotely.

Remotely, in this case, is a synonym for “home.”

For many lawyers, managing professionals who are not in the office – who are not in any office – is new, and may feel like one of those old maps whose edge bears the legend There be dragons here.

Let’s try to slay a few of those dragons, or at least encourage them to find other prey.

Treat Them as You Want to Be Treated

This tenet should apply at all times, of . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on practice, research, writing and technology.

Practice

Get Help From Clio During COVID-19
Emma Durand-Wood

Clio has just announced a $1 million COVID-19 legal relief initiative in order “to help create business continuity and peace of mind for you, your law firm or your legal organization. …

Research & Writing

Are You Old or Just Elderly?
Neil Guthrie

Elderly is a tricky word. In North America, it’s used as a euphemistic — or at least . . . [more]

Avoid a Claim
Video Conferencing Checklist

There are a lot of things lawyers need to keep track of when providing legal services by video conference. This Video Conferencing Checklist (Word . . . [more]

In tough times, people pull together. Instinctively we might know or believe this, but this is substantiated by the research.

Cooperation is quite common among survivors of disasters, with socially structured and adaptive behaviour often manifested in mass emergencies. From an evolutionary biological perspective this makes sense, as the countless crises that have plagued humanity over the ages were only surmountable through interreliance on others.

Despite this history, which is often unwritten, there are many myths as to how we as a society respond to disasters. These myths include mass panic, when a crowd has a limited opportunity to escape . . . [more]