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) : La juge de la Cour du Québec ne pouvait faire l’économie de la question du lieu du procès à Kuujjuaq plutôt qu’à Quaqtaq ni du droit de l’appelant d’être jugé dans sa communauté; cela étant, il n’est pas question ici d’une erreur de compétence, et le juge . . . [more]

It’s difficult to find the balance between beating yourself up for a failure and reviewing what went wrong in an attempt to uncover the lessons learned. I try not to stew on past mistakes and quite frankly, rarely categorize less ‘successful’ projects that way. All my project experiences have improved me professionally and helped to fine tune my processes for the next project.

Whether a project is perceived as a success or a failure, I can’t stress enough the value of the debrief. Hindsight really is 20/20. On a project we need a bit of distance to reflect on what . . . [more]

At the beginning of 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. Reference re An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families, 2024 SCC 5

[64] It is open to Parliament to affirm, as it has in s. 18(1), what it considers to be the constitutional requirements for reconciliation, even if it cannot, by doing so, unilaterally . . . [more]

“Trial by jury is an institution unique to common law countries. It is more than a mere incident of criminal procedure. It has been described as a pillar of the Constitution and praised as a palladium of liberty. ” – Regina v. Bryant, 1984 CanLII 2026 (ON CA), <https://canlii.ca/t/g187z>.

In the recent decision Penate v. Martoglio, 2024 ONCA 166, Justice Tulloch of the Ontario Court of Appeal addresses the importance of a civil jury trial in the context of a medical malpractice case. In Penate v Martoglio, the plaintiff Penate suffered a serious brain injury at birth, which . . . [more]

“There are few things more important than one’s name. It reflects one’s identity, individuality and human dignity.” Adam Dodek, “Mispronouncing names isn’t okay, and it has nothing to do with being ‘woke’”

There’s a movement underway in the legal community to focus attention on the proper pronunciation of names in legal settings. There is a growing recognition that the proper pronunciation of names shows respect and is more inclusive. The minimal effort involved in promoting the proper pronunciation of names can result in a more welcoming and respectful hearing room.

In 2022, the Law Society of Ontario recommended the use . . . [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.

Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges, and the RDS Case. By Constance Backhouse. UBC Press: Vancouver, 2022. 289 p. Includes chronology, bibliographic notes, illustrations, and index. ISBN 9780774868228 (hardcover) $75.00; ISBN 9780774868273 (softcover) $27.95; ISBN 9780774868297 (ePUB) $27.95; ISBN 9780774868280 (PDF) $27.95.

Reviewed by Lori O’Connor
Public Prosecutions
Melfort, SK

Reckoning . . . [more]

Last week, as I was preparing for our joint Windsor Law and EPICentre conference “Disruptive Technology: AI and Its Impact on the Legal Profession and the Automotive Industry – What Path(s) for Regulation“, this article flew by:

Jackie Davalos, Dina Bass, and Bloomberg, “Chatbots Keep Going Rogue as Microsoft Probes AI – powered Copilot that’s giving users bizarre, disturbing, even harmful messages” (Fortune, February 28, 2024). The original Reddit post shows a variety of outputs that interested users received.

First of all, some of them did acknowledge that the whole thing could be a hoax. However, Microsoft’s response, . . . [more]

As a general principle, citations in scholarly works have two purposes: to prove that the point is supported by evidence, and to allow the reader to find the evidence that the author is citing to. The pain of citations comes from the requirement that these citations be made as brief as possible by painstakingly utilizing a series of standardized abbreviations. The requirement to abbreviate arises mainly from a historical limitation: the scarcity of paper and ink.

I hear from other scholars that readers increasingly choose to read scholarly works in electronic formats and it seems likely that this trend will . . . [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) : Le juge de première instance a eu raison de conclure que l’accusé avait contrevenu à l’ordonnance prévue à l’article 161 (1) a) C.Cr.; c’est à bon droit que le juge a retenu que le parc dans lequel l’accusé avait été interpellé correspondait à un «parc public» et . . . [more]

Access to justice applies to everyone. However, most formal access to justice initiatives focus (rightly) on people who are especially vulnerable due to poverty or very low income. IAALS (the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System) has just launched a new, organized network of individuals and organizations across the U.S. and in Canada who are committed to improving A2J for the “middle-class”.

It is called the Above the Line Network (ATLN).

The idea is to create a collaborative community to share ideas, resources and learnings and work together on innovative ways to meet the needs of this . . . [more]