A case scheduled for fall 2025 before the Ontario Court of Appeal will presumably address the appropriate test for granting leaves to appeal (see Knauff v. Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (Div. Ct.) (“Knauff“). The resulting decision should tell us whether parties seeking leave to appeal from the Divisional Court should follow West Whitby Landowners Group Inc. v. Elexicon Energy Inc. (Ont. CA) (“West Whitby”) or Davis v. Aviva General Insurance Company (Ont. CA) (“Davis“).

In West Whitby, a panel composed of Brown, Huscroft and Miller JJ.A. questioned whether Re Sault Dock Co. . . . [more]

This is a case of not closing the barn door after the horse is out, to use a pre-twentieth-century expression for a twenty-first-century issue. But, more precisely, I want to argue for propping the barn door open to enable the rest of the horses to run free after a good number have been questionably sold off.

Let me explain. Think of those sold-off horses as the research studies that at least three major research publishers – Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Oxford University Press with more deals pending – have rented out to AI giants, such as Microsoft, for the . . . [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.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Il existe une possibilité réelle que la juge de première instance n’ait pas examiné la question cruciale de savoir si l’accusé — un jeune homme de 17 ans souffrant d’une déficience intellectuelle et qui a tué sa mère — avait l’intention subjective requise pour commettre l’infraction de . . . [more]

The concept of “professional identify formation” came to the fore in 2007, when the report Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law[1] was published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching . Commonly known as the Carnegie Report, it determined that preparation for the profession required three apprenticeships. The third of these was “concerned with providing entrants to the field effective ways to engage and make their own the ethical standards, social roles, and responsibilities of the profession, grounded in the profession’s fundamental purposes.”[2] This concept became known as “professional identify formation.”

Further defining professional

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.

COVID-19, Law & Regulation: Rights, Freedoms, and Obligations in a Pandemic. By Belinda Bennett, Ian Freckelton & Gabrielle Wolf. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. vii, 674 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 9780192896742 (hardcover) $165.00.

Reviewed by Marnie Bailey
Manager, Knowledge Services
Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP

COVID-19, Law & . . . [more]

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

For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were:

1. Afolabi v. Law Society of Ontario, 2025 ONCA 257

[102] The LSO has a duty to protect the public interest, maintain public confidence in the profession, and ensure the entry-level competence of incoming licensees. It is to be afforded considerable latitude in regulating the legal profession and in determining how the duty . . . [more]

The market for legal AI is teaming with options. Many of them are compelling. All of them are expensive.

What the companies offering these tools hope that you don’t notice is that free (or almost free) tools, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are getting so good at basic legal research tasks that many lawyers looking to boost their productivity don’t need to look any further.

We highlight three ways to use these free tools to make research more effective — but we note that becoming a subscriber to one of them, for roughly $30 a month, will tend . . . [more]

Ten years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set out some recommendations for cultural competency training for lawyers, law students and public servants. The Calls to Action (numbers 27, 28 and 57) call for education/training on the history of Indigenous peoples, including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal–Crown relations. The Commission stated that such training would require “skills based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and anti-racism”.

There were no calls to action for education or training of judges. . . . [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.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Les dispositions ayant haussé l’âge du consentement de 14 à 16 ans, lesquelles sont en vigueur depuis 2008, ne font pas obstacle à l’application de l’ancien article 140 du Code criminel en l’espèce; ainsi, dans la mesure où la victime avait 14 ans en 1981 et où . . . [more]

Ontario’s Civil Rules Review Working Group has proposed the most comprehensive reform of Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure since their introduction in 1985. The Consultation Paper released in early April weighs in at 122 pages, with recommendations affecting every major element of civil litigation within the province.

The Working Group’s overarching goal is to get “all cases heard within two years.” This is certainly not unambitious, given that the status quo average is between four and five years. Quicker times to disposition, the Working Group hopes, will generate lower legal bills and better access to justice.

There seem . . . [more]