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) (May 14 – June 10, 2015 inclusive).

Appeals

Constitutional/Aboriginal Law: s.15
Kahkewistahaw First Nation v. Taypotat, 2015 SCC 30 (35518)
To establish a prima facie violation of s. 15(1), a claimant must demonstrate the law at issue has a disproportionate . . . [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.

CONSTITUTIONNEL (DROIT) : Les deux juges municipaux retraités demandeurs échouent dans leur tentative de faire déclarer que l’article 39 de la Loi sur les cours municipales est ultra vires et inopérant en général ou inapplicable à leur cas et qu’ils ont le droit de continuer à exercer leur rôle de . . . [more]

In my recent post “A Few Thoughts for Family Law Litigants: Why it Pays to Let Bygones Be Bygones,” I wrote about the foolishness of litigants who allow themselves to be guided by hurt feelings or desire for revenge when taking their family law dispute to court. I also gave a few examples of the typical sort of silliness I often saw in my practice when parents managed their conflict by exchanging allegations and counterallegations in affidavits, such as this gem from early in my career:

Her: “You drink all the time. You’re always drunk and there are

As you can see from the latest banner on the top of Slaw, Recommind Inc. is set to host a series of eDiscovery Socials in June. The company has arranged for three of their senior thinkers to come to Toronto (June 17th), Calgary (June 24th) and Montreal (June 25th) to discuss everything from big data trends and advanced analytics to new methods for targeted document review.

It’s also worth noting that these events are intended to be networking events and not a sales spiel. The goal is simply to connect with professionals in Canadian firms that are either facing difficult . . . [more]

For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, interrupted occasionally by a reference you might like to follow up. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.

MEASURING LIFE
 
Chapter 15
Winter’s Hem

Access to justice issues have frequented academic, legal, political and mainstream debates for many years (with Slawyers often initiating or driving the dialogue happening in the Canadian blogosphere!). Yet, until now, there has been no identifiable, central platform in Canada where a wide range of justice stakeholders can exchange research and resources, raise questions and share ideas and concerns about access to justice issues. As fellow blogger Karen Dyck notes there is “… innovation in access to justice happening everywhere…[but there is] little evidence of either coordination or collaboration toward what seems to be a common goal.”

In response to . . . [more]

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal recently considered the types of accommodations employers are required to make with regard employees with scent sensitivites.

The employee, a teacher with the Coquitlam School District, filed a complaint with the Tribunal alleging that her employer’s failure to provide a scent-free work environment amounted to discrimination on the basis of physical disability, contrary to British Columbia’s Human Rights Code.

In an attempt to accommodate her disability, the School Board and the employee agreed upon an exposure control plan that would allow the employee to take steps to minimize her allergic reaction, including leaving the . . . [more]

The Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta recently overturned a finding of disability discrimination in employment in the case of Syncrude Canada Ltd v Saunders, 2015 ABQB 237 (CanLII). The Court decided that the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal erred in finding that the employee established a prima facie case of discrimination when the evidence could not reasonably support the conclusion that the employee suffered from a disability or a perceived disability requiring accommodation. . . . [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.

Rethinking Canadian Legal Responses to Frozen Embryo Disputes

Stefanie Carsley
Canadian Journal of Family Law issue #29(1)
Copyright © 2015 Reprinted with permission from The Canadian Journal of Family Law

Excerpt: Introduction and Part I
[Footnotes omitted. They can be found in the original via the link above]

INTRODUCTION

In December 2012, the . . . [more]

Our firm recently held its Annual General Meeting during which five of our senior partners were asked to share information about their careers and what has aided in their success. We are likely not alone when I say these meetings can be dry, very dry. The group of them asked for my assistance as they were unsure how to make the presentation entertaining.

We had 45 minutes to present 10 tips that made these five people successful. If you do that math really quickly, each person was only given a few minutes to get their point across – and being . . . [more]

Bill C-51 (Anti-Terrorist Act, 2015) has been passed by the Senate despite massive opposition against its privacy unfriendly invasive powers. See, for example, commentary by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, this article by security law professors entitled “Why Can’t Canada Get National Security Law Right“, and this post on Openmedia.ca .

Yet in the United States, the USA Freedom Act was just passed that pulled back a bit on the ability of the NSA to collect domestic data.

There seems to be no evidence that all this invasive spying and data collection actually reduces or prevents terrorism . . . [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. R. v. Delchev, 2015 ONCA 381

[45] In explaining how I reach this conclusion, I first outline the approach to the review of prosecutorial discretion, including the threshold evidentiary burden that must be met by an accused person alleging an abuse of process based on the improper exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Second, I explain why the Crown’s offer and the circumstances . . . [more]