As a lawyer who wears many “hats” in my work, I like to relax by watching movies.

Recently I watched a movie called “Hector and the search for happiness”.

The title intrigued me.

As a lawyer, mediator, wellness coach, I am always looking for ways to be happier. In fact, I believe that this has been the human condition for generations, wherein people have been striving to find happiness. I hope that this piece will give you some time to ponder ways in which you can increase your happiness and decrease the stress that is omnipresent within the legal profession. . . . [more]

If you need to monitor changes to a website, one option is VisualPing. 

VisualPing allows you to monitor either visual changes or changes to the text; if you’re monitoring text, you can limit alerts to when specific keywords are added or deleted. You can also specify the degree of the changes (e.g. “tiny (1%)” or “gigantic (50%)” which, depending on the frequency of changes to the page, can be extremely helpful.

If the website you are monitoring requires specific actions to retrieve information (e.g. fill in a form or click on a button), VisualPing has the ability to do . . . [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.

DROITS ET LIBERTÉS : Le couvre-feu prévu au Décret concernant l’ordonnance de mesures visant à protéger la santé de la population dans la situation de pandémie de la COVID-19 (décret 2-2021) porte atteinte au droit à la liberté d’expression, à la liberté de réunion pacifique et à la liberté des . . . [more]

A refreshing aspect of Slaw.ca is that professionals from various backgrounds contribute to this content. Outside this space, the vast majority of my scrolling is focused on caselaw, commentary, and news related to immigration laws and policies. Extremely limited, I admit. Slaw.ca exposes me (and you, I suppose, as another reader) to think about areas of law outside my silo, possibly to our benefit.

Would it be an overstatement to assert that silo thinking has undermined our advocacy? Have our resources & energy become so focused within our specialized little areas of expertise that we have neglected developments in other . . . [more]

Floods and wildfires have displaced thousands. BC’s heat dome killed 600. It is not an exaggeration to say that climate change is having a profound impact on the rights of Canadians. At the same time, climate cases currently moving through Canadian courts are raising questions regarding whether and how citizens can hold governments to account for authorizing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that violate their Charter rights.

The common law has long said that for any right, there is a legal remedy. Increasingly, people facing climate change threats are turning to the courts, in a wave of climate litigation that has . . . [more]

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.

Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials. Edited by Anita Szigeti & Ruby Dhand. Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2022. xxix, 552 p. Includes table of cases, table of statutes, and index. ISBN 9780433525165 (softcover) $135.00.

Reviewed by Melanie R. Bueckert
Legal Research Counsel
Manitoba Court of Appeal

Law and . . . [more]

Last week’s journey to Toronto with the University of Calgary’s Black law students for the 33rd National Conference of the Black Law Students Association of Canada (BLSAC) was more than a trip; it was a profound emotional journey for both me and my students. This event was not just a conference; it was a historic gathering of some 600 Black law students (and aspiring Black law students), the largest of its kind in the annals of BLSAC, marking the biggest assembly of Black law students in the entire history of Canada. In a profession where Black individuals and people of . . . [more]

INTRODUCTION

The Supreme Court of Canada recently decided in Ontario (Attorney General) v. Ontario (Information and Privacy Commissioner) that the public is not entitled to see the mandate letters that the Premier of Ontario issued to his cabinet ministers in 2018. The SCC disagreed with the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC), the unanimous Ontario Divisional Court and the majority of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, all of whom concluded that the cabinet records exemption under the Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) did not apply to the letters.

In this post, I do . . . [more]

The Federal Court of Appeal had the opportunity to examine the implied license to use a patented article upon its unrestricted sale in Pharmascience Inc. v. Janssen Inc., 2024 FCA 10.

The issue arose since Pharmascience’s proposed paliperidone palmitate for the treatment of schizophrenia and related disorders did not offer the 75 mg-eq. dosage form which would be available from the Patentee Janssen. Janssen brought action under subsection 6(1) of the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations^[1]. In that action, the respondents, Janssen sought a declaration that Pharmascience would infringe Canadian Patent No. 2,655,3.

Pharmascience defence was that . . . [more]

The robots are already in control. Having witnessed several systems migrations, I’ve been saying this for at least a decade.

Robots Gone Mad

Remember how the Phoenix pay system wreaked havoc on public servant pay back in 2016? Did you know that system has cost more than $2.4 billion? The problems persisted well into 2022. A full timeline for implementation was nicely set out by the Ottawa Citizen.

Now think about Ontario’s Social Assistance Management system. It cost over $294 million to build and fix after being implemented in 2014. Major issues were experienced as a result. . . . [more]

The plain language movement in law has been in full swing for many years now. A plain language approach to legal drafting is taught in most law schools, and members of the judiciary are urged to generate decisions for parties in plain and ordinary language. This contrasts with the historically legalistic and complex language of law understood exclusively by lawyers, judges, and the academics who study law. Underlining the plain language movement is the belief that law, including the articulation of submissions made to court, the decisions rendered by judges, and even the legislation drafted by legislators, ought to be . . . [more]