On 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, SupremeAdvocacyLett@r, to which you may subscribe.

Summary of all appeals and leaves to appeal granted (so you know what the S.C.C. will soon be dealing with). For leaves, both the date the S.C.C. granted leave and the date of the C.A. judgment below are added in, in case you want to track and check out the C.A. judgment. (Dec. 14 – Jan. 16, 2014 inclusive).

APPEALS

Copyright: Compensatory . . . [more]

B.C. Supreme Court not entitled to declare provisions of Criminal Code unconstitutional and contrary to Charter in light of 1993 decision of Supreme Court of Canada holding impugned provisions to be constitutionally valid

Quebec’s ombudsperson—le protecteur du citoyen—offered her support to Bill 52, An Act respecting end-of-life care, in a brief presented to the national assembly’s committee on health and social services. The ombudsperson’s submission to the assembly is important because as its French name indicates, the protecteur du citoyen’s mandate is to protect the rights of citizens or groups of citizens, which includes proposing amendments to existing or draft acts, regulations, directives, and administrative policies in order to improve them for the public good.

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week’s summaries concern:
Sovereign immunity / Expert evidence / Parental benefits under EI / Metis fishing rights / Questions by criminal jury / Insurance claim and limitations / Intervenors added on appeal / Equality and matrimonial property:

Steen et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran et al. 2013 ONCA 30
International Law – Sovereignty – Incidents of . . . [more]

In a report released this week, a Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel proposes that assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia should be decriminalized for competent individuals who make a free and informed decision that their life is no longer worth living.

The panel concludes:

1. That there is a moral right, grounded in autonomy, for competent and informed individuals who have decided after careful consideration of the relevant facts, that their continuing life is not worth living, to non-interference with requests for assistance with suicide or voluntary euthanasia.
2. That none of the grounds for denying individuals the enjoyment of their moral

. . . [more]

Former Senator Gérald Beaudoin, one of the giants of Canadian constitutional scholarship, passed away yesterday.

He was 79.

He was named to the Upper Chamber in 1988 by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and retired in 2004 at the mandatory age of 75.

Beaudoin taught law at the University of Ottawa where he served as dean of civil law 1969 to 1979.

He was a member of the Pépin-Robarts Commission, 1977-79, co-chairman of the Beaudoin-Edwards and of the Beaudoin-Dobbie committees on constitutional renewal.

He also presided over the Senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs and was a member of . . . [more]

The federal government has now introduced changes to its legislation on medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in response to the Truchon decision. The existing Criminal Code provisions, enacted after the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Carter, had been criticised on several grounds, particularly in requiring death to be “reasonably foreseeable” before someone is eligible for medical assistance in dying. The 2019 Quebec Superior Court decision in Truchon held that the foreseeability requirement in the Criminal Code and the parallel Quebec provision in that province’s End-of-Life Care Act are unconstitutional. The government’s Bill C-7 is in response to Truchon . . . [more]

When Bill C-14 received Royal Assent on June 17, 2016 Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) became law in Canada. But the debate over the limits of MAID are far from over.

Bill C-14 includes a number of review mechanisms. The entire scheme is subject to a 5-year review, with a report to be submitted with recommendations.

Specific portions of the Bill are subject to a shorter-term review, for “requests by mature minors for medical assistance in dying, to advance requests and to requests where mental illness is the sole underlying medical condition.” These issues were inadequately resolved at the time . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from seventy recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Michael Geist 2. IFLS Osgoode 3. Canadian Class Actions Monitor 4. Susan on the Soapbox 5. National Magazine Blog

Michael Geist
Former Copyright Board Chair Vancise Takes Aim at the Board Critics

The Honourable William Vancise, the former Chair of the Copyright Board of Canada, recently delivered a combative . . . [more]

In 2015, practitioners in all types of firms blog. It’s a necessity of modern practice these days, and most have come around to understanding the importance of some social media presence.

If you don’t create your online footprint, someone else will for you – usually a disgruntled client.

One of the prerequisites to being appointed to the bench though is that you have to be a lawyer, usually for a good number of years. Although we’ve seen blogging lawyers appointed to the bench in recent years, and Slaw is one of the few sites where we’ve had guest judge bloggers, . . . [more]

Each Thursday 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.

Modern Law, Modern Hammers: Canada’s Witchcraft Provision as an Image of Persecution

Natasha Bakht, Associate Professor, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and Jordan Palmer, PhD Candidate, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law
(2015) 35 Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues 123

Excerpt: pp 123-125, 131-143

[Footnotes omitted. They can . . . [more]