“What kind of Canada do you want? One that prioritizes industrial development over
people, or one that finds innovative ways to grow its economy in balance with nature?”

If you’re interested in environmental law and environmental justice then you’re probably aware of the fantastic work done by Ecojustice. It was 1990 when they started “leading the environmental fight” in Canada under the Sierra Legal Defense Fund banner. That’s 25 years of successful “groundbreaking” litigation representing community groups, non-profit organizations, First Nations, and individual Canadians. Through their efforts they have “secured many precedent-setting legal victories that protect wildlife . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty 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. Susan on the Soapbox  2. ABlawg.ca 3. All About Information  4. University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog  5. À bon droit

Susan on the Soapbox
POTUS Kills Keystone XL

On Friday Barack Obama refused to issue a presidential permit allowing TCPL’s Keystone XL pipeline to cross the border . . . [more]

The Place of Clinical Legal Education was the theme of the 6^th annual conference of the Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education (ACCLE), held at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law from October 22-24.

The conference keynote was by author and playwright Maria Campbell on the place of clinics in reconciliation. Some of the topics covered at the conference were:

• Beyond Cultural Competence: the Place of Decolonialization in Clinics
• Leveraging Law School: Breaking Down Silos to Enhance Access to Justice
• Community Lawyering and Teaching Clinics
• The Internet as a Site for Clinical Legal Education: Using Online Dispute Resolution

As lawyers, we hold ourselves to a higher code of conduct. So when that code is called into question, for example through allegations of impropriety around drug trafficking, they create cause for concern for the entire bar.

In 2012, Deryk Gravesande was charged with trafficking after approximately 58 grams of marijuana and a parcel of lidocaine was found on his former client, who was incarcerated at the time. The guard claimed to search the prisoner both prior and following his meeting, and it was in the second search that the drugs were found in the prisoner’s underwear.

He was convicted . . . [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): Accusés de crimes graves depuis 2009, les requérants, qui en sont à leur cinquième demande, obtiennent un arrêt des procédures fondé sur les lacunes de la communication de la preuve.

Intitulé : Berger c. R., 2015 QCCS 4666
Juridiction : Cour supérieure (C.S.), Montréal, 500-01-094385-132
Décision de :  . . . [more]

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, Supreme Advocacy Letter, 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 (October 8 to November 11, 2015 inclusive).

Appeals

Criminal Law: Automatic Roadside Prohibitions
Goodwin v. British Columbia (Superintendent of Motor Vehicles), 2015 SCC 46 (35864)

The “ARP” scheme is valid provincial legislation, and s. 11 of the Charter is . . . [more]

This being Friday the 13th, my alternative post-title was the name of the song you’ll find here and here; on the other hand, I am allergic to most cats, black or otherwise. What does that have to do with the problem in the decision I’m about to write about? Well … how about this? If we can’t blame the problem on “slow aether”, maybe it’s just bad luck. I mean, what else could it be?

Consider these paragraphs from Taylor v Great Gulf Group Limited, 2015 ONSC 6891 (CanLII) released on 9 Nov. 2015. Taylor is the . . . [more]

We tend to repeat ourselves. We like doing that. Perhaps because if “it” was good, we’d be crazy not to want “it” again. After all, as Voltaire said (though he laid it off on a “wise Italian”), better is the enemy of good. So why risk loss, when the gain promised by repetition is assured? And, too, there’s something about the fact of repetition itself, regardless of what the thing is that gets repeated, that is pleasing, soothing: a child being rocked, jiggled gently — or a heart beating again and again and again . . .

Things can go . . . [more]

According to the English media, Facebook is thinking of generating an automatic warning to a member who posts a picture of a child to a publicly-accessible page on Facebook.

Is this a serious over-reaction to the threat that the kid – or the parents – face from such a posting? How many people are actually affected by predators of any kind using online pictures? What proportion are those victims of the numbers of people whose pics are on FB?

Is this a tactic by FB to appear to be concerned about privacy when its entire lucrative business model is . . . [more]

Two recent situations have led to calls for international accountability mechanisms. The responses to these calls differ widely. Why is this interesting? They show the potential of a more open justice innovation approach. And the costs of not doing so.

The first situation is the tragic downing of flight Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine on 17 July 2014, which led to 298 deaths. Politicians from the counties that suffered most losses – The Netherlands, Australia, and Malaysia – where quick to capture the public sentiment and announced: those responsible will be held to account. This was given international force . . . [more]

In R. v Cusick, the Ontario Superior Court upheld a search warrant of a computer where that computer was suspected of having been used to upload child pornography to a cloud storage service.

What one searches for, apparently, are ‘artifacts’ – digital traces of the child porn files that passed through the computer on the way to the cloud. The case notes the difference between uploading from the computer’s hard drive (in which case the files may also still be on the computer) and uploading from a USB drive or mobile device (in which case they may not be, . . . [more]

The Manitoba Customer Service Accessibility Standard (CSAS) under the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA) came into effect November 1, 2015. The CSAS requires all of Manitoba’s public, private and non-profit organizations with one or more employees that provide goods or services directly to the public or to another organization in Manitoba, to establish and implement measures, policies and practices to remove barriers for access to the goods or services it provides. . . . [more]