Since the summer of 2017 Canada, Mexico and the United States have been negotiating with the objective of agreeing on a revised NAFTA—sometimes called NAFTA 2.0. Most observers take the view that the talks have not gone well to date. The U.S. Administration is now signaling that it wants to take a hiatus until after the Congressional mid-term negotiations in November. This, in spite of renewed pushes from Canada and the newly elected Mexican President’s calls to accelerate the talks. It seems that the parties cannot even agree on the timetable, and it has grown increasingly clear that there is . . . [more]

Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Anticipating and Managing the Psychological Cost of Civil Litigation

Michaela Keet and Heather Heavin have published extensively about Litigation Risk Assessment. For access to some of this work, see the CREATE Justice website. Professor Heavin is Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, and Professor Michaela . . . [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. Ryerson University v Ryerson Faculty Association, 2018 CanLII 58446 (ON LA)

According to the evidence, which was largely uncontested, and which came in the form of expert testimony and peer reviewed publications, numerous factors, especially personal characteristics – and this is just a partial list – such as race, gender, accent, age and “attractiveness” skew SET results. It is almost impossible . . . [more]

Everyone knew that the marketing and promotion restrictions on packaging for licensed producers in the recreational market were going to be onerous.

The Cannabis Act (the “Act”) itself sets out a number of restrictions, including prohibitions on packaging that:

• could be appealing to young persons;
• sets out a testimonial or endorsement, however displayed or communicated;
• depicts a person, character or animal, whether real or fictional;
• associates the cannabis or one of its brand elements with a way of life; or
• contains information that is false or misleading.

On top of what is set out in the Act itself, in March, . . . [more]

Canada is known around the world for the quality of its student legal clinics and the level of responsibility given to law students.

In 2016, the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education held its annual conference in Toronto jointly with the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education (ACCLE). A number of my students attended, and were surprised to learn that Canadian law students carried a great deal more responsibility than their counterparts in other countries.

My students handle trials in criminal matters, small claims court, and landlord and tenant matters. They draft wills and powers of attorney. They handle mediations. . . . [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 research, writing, practice and technology.

Technology

Add Your Summer Office Hours to Your Google My Business Listing
Emma Durand-Wood

Does your firm or organization have shortened office hours over the summer? Or perhaps you’re taking some time off over the next couple months and therefore closing up your office for a week or two. …

Research & Writing

Redundancy
Neil Guthrie

Linguistic redundancy, not the employment variety. In the linguistic category, there are both . . . [more]

Far-right American groups tout the threat of “creeping sharia.” Comparable groups in Canada appear to be warning of a threat of a different kind, of the influence of the Charter in Canadian society.

If this seems puzzling, you’re not alone. The Charter is part of the Canadian constitution, arguably the most important legal document in our entire system. And yet, it becomes a convenient scapegoat when courts make decisions that some aspects of society disagree with.

What I’m talking about is Prof. Bruce Pardy, who criticized the Court’s decision in Trinity Western University v. Law Society of Upper Canada. . . . [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.

FAMILLE : La juge de première instance a commis des erreurs déterminantes qui l’ont amenée à conclure que la stabilité de la fille des parties exigeait son maintien auprès de son père à la suite du déménagement de sa mère.

Intitulé : Droit de la famille — 181293, 2018 QCCA . . . [more]

With very little fanfare, but flood of notifications heralding its imminent arrival, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) came into direct effect across the 28 member states of the European Union and three of the four states belonging to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), (collectively the European Economic Area (EEA)) on May 25, 2018. The Regulation has been on the statute books for a couple of years, but only appeared on the legal risk radar recently. The maximum penalties for non-compliance are jaw dropping and headline grabbing – €20M or 2% of global revenue for non-compliance . . . [more]

On June 20, 2018, the federal government introduced Bill C-81, An Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, the long-awaited national accessibility legislation which will enable the government of Canada to take a proactive approach to end systemic discrimination of people with disabilities.

The Bill also known as the Accessible Canada Act would establish a model to eliminate accessibility barriers and lead to more consistent accessibility in areas covered by federally regulated sectors such as banking, inter-provincial and international transportation, telecommunications and government-run services such as Canada Post and federally funded organizations. Moreover, the Bill aims to “identify, remove and . . . [more]

In Part I of this two-part column, I examined the fate of a current California legislative initiative intended to expand access rights to state-sponsored research. While the bill continues to move through the legislature, my previous post discusses how the publishers lobby swiftly managed to amend the bill, eliminating its six-month reduction of the twelve-month embargo period (allowed publishers to delay providing open access after publication). While attesting to their support for open access, in principle, the publishers held that reducing (by six months) the public’s wait to see this research violated their property rights and threatened the future . . . [more]