The Canadian Foundation for Legal Research announced the winner of the 2019 Walter Owen Book Prize this morning. Congratulations to this year’s winner, Jonathan Rudin, for his publication, Indigenous People and the Criminal Justice System: A Practitioner’s Handbook (Emond Publishing).

“Founder and current Program Director of Aboriginal Legal Services in Toronto, Mr. Rudin was selected from among 35 nominees to receive a $15,000 cash prize for his ground-breaking contribution to Canadian law literature.“

Finalists for this year’s award included:

• Robert J. Sharpe for Good Judgment: Making Judicial Decisions
• Philip Girard, Jim Phillips and R. Blake Brown for 

On October 25 & 26, Windsor Law proudly hosted the 2019 conference of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics. The presentations touched on many of the most important issues confronting the legal profession today. Check out the brief summaries below to stay up to date.

Thematic Index

• Access to justice (see presentations #3 and #11 below)
• Zealous advocacy and its limits (see presentations #1 and #2 below)
• Harassment and discrimination within the profession (presentations #16, 17, 18)
• Teaching ethics in law school (presentations #6, 7, 8, 9)
• The Regulation of Judges (presentations #12, #15)
• The limits of “business-like” lawyer

With the legalization of cannabis in Canada, and greater transparency around the use of drugs, public health officials have greater interest in tracking the use and dependence of the population on various substances.

The 2017 Canadian Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey, which is conducted every 2 years, found that the prevalence of one of six illegal drugs was 15%, or 4.5 million people. At the time, cannabis was still illegal, and many researchers intend to observe whether the vast majority of these people, 4.4 million, increase or remain the same after legalization.

The survey found that alcohol use was . . . [more]

One Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all appeals as well as leaves to appeal granted so you will know what the SCC will soon be dealing with (November 16 – December 13, 2019 inclusive).

Appeals

Constitutional/Maritime Law: Division of Powers; Sale of Marine Parts
Desgagnés Transport Inc. v. Wärtsilä Canada Inc., 2019 SCC 58 (37873)

The federal maritime law at issue here . . . [more]

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 Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

COMMERCIAL (DROIT) : L’Autorité des marchés publics a manifestement contrevenu aux règles de justice naturelle, tant dans le processus menant à la décision que dans la décision rendue, soit celle de rejeter la demande d’autorisation de contracter avec un organisme public que lui avait soumise la demanderesse.

Intitulé : Entreprises . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs (newest first):

• • Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor (International Economic Law ) (Full-time) | Ottawa, ON
    (University of Ottawa)
  • Assistant Professor or Associate Professor (Business, Tax Law) (Full-time) | Ottawa, ON
    (University of Ottawa)

Written by Lewis Waring, Paralegal, Editor, First Reference Inc.

In Groves v UTS Consultants Inc, 2019 ONSC 5605 (“Groves”), the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (“SCJ”) held that an employer cannot contract out of its obligations under the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (“ESA”) by including a “saving clause” in its employment contract. Moreover, a contract that attempts to make an employer exempt from its obligations under the ESA is unenforceable, and, in Groves, the SCJ merely applied this uncontroversial principle to what is known as a saving clause. . . . [more]

2018 was a tough act to follow, but 2019 was, once again, a great year for CanLII, to say the least. More than ever, our successes are due to the relationships we have developed with organizations across the country that have embraced our vision for the future of free access to law. We are grateful they have agreed to share their content with us and hope to celebrate these relationships with this post, among other things.

Commentary

As regular readers of this blog will have appreciated by now, we’ve been multiplying announcements over the course of the year about new . . . [more]

My inbox fills up each day with messages from members of the public (NSRLP has an active public email, answered by dedicated NSRLP research assistants, but many SRLs write me directly).

It is still not well understood that the vast majority of SRLs are still looking for and extremely desirous of legal help. In my 2013 study, this figure was 86%. Similar results are reported by studies in the US, England and Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and Northern Ireland. All these studies also found that by far the most significant reason for self-representation is . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Drug-Impaired Driving in Canada. By Nathan Baker. Toronto: Irwin Law, 2018. 243 p. Includes references. ISBN: 978-1-55221-492-3 (paperback) $60.00; ISBN 978-1-55221-493-0 (eBook) $60.00.

Reviewed by Bobbie A. Walker
Certified by the Law Society as a Specialist in Criminal Law
St. Catharines, ON
In CLLR 44:4

Drug-Impaired Driving in Canada tackles a . . . [more]

Earlier this month, I was kindly invited by Jason Morris to speak (via Skype) to his “Coding The Law” class at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. We had a great chat on a range of topics, but one in particular stood out for me and I wanted to share it with a wider audience.

We were talking about the transition from law school into the legal profession, and yes, we did spend quite some time talking about all the ways in which law school does a poor job of preparing students for practice. But I pointed out one . . . [more]