Since the onset of the pandemic in March of this year, municipalities across the country have instituted policies and by-laws that have had a serious impact on residents, often not following regular processes. The University of Windsor Faculty of Law Centre for Cities has recently released its report about municipal states of emergency, States of Emergency (“the Report”), co-authored by Dr. Anneke Smit (Director, Centre for Cities) and students Hana Syed, Aucha Stewart, Terra Duchene, and Michael Fazzari, which analyses the response of municipalities across Canada in the early days of the pandemic and proposes a way forward, not only . . . [more]

Following the decisions by the Ontario and Saskatchewan Court of Appeal over the constitutionality of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, the Supreme Court of Canada is expected to hear their appeals on Sept. 22-23, 2020.

The provinces did not wait for the courts to resolve this matter entirely, and in Ontario, the Minister of Finance at the time protested loudly on April 11, 2019 in the legislature,

Mr. Speaker, while our government takes deliberate steps to make Ontario open for business and open for jobs, the federal government is taking deliberate steps to make the cost of nearly

Energy projects in Canada are of enormous public interest, with significant economic, social, and environmental affects. The National Energy Board Act allowed for the National Energy Board to provide a report for the certification of a pipeline, with recommendations to the Governor in Council, while considering the following relevant factors:

• (a) the availability of oil, gas or any other commodity to the pipeline;

• (b) the existence of markets, actual or potential;

• (c) the economic feasibility of the pipeline;

• (d) the financial responsibility and financial structure of the applicant, the methods of financing the pipeline and the extent to which Canadians

Ontario’s 2018 election for the 42nd Parliament was something remarkable. It denoted the worst result for any incumbent government party in the province’s history.

The governing party secured this success despite an unexpected leadership race triggered only months before the June election. In part, voters’ motivation appeared to be informed by a need for change.

This overwhelming success by the government has been repeated cited as a “mandate,” to effectively enact almost any policy priority identified by them, even if done so following their election. With a majority government, there has already been widespread legal reforms, though some have been . . . [more]

The past decade has generally seen a significant contraction in the admission of legal graduates in the U.S., largely influenced by broader economic trends. The ABA Journal reported in 2017,

For nearly 40 years starting in 1971, law schools had an average first-year class size of 246 students, peaking to 262 in 2010. Since then, that average has dropped 31 percent to an average of 182 students.

This trend reversed last year, which has been attributed in part to greater political polarization in the U.S., especially around key legal and constitutional issues. The Law School Admission Council volume comparisons over . . . [more]

In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada held that the health-related warnings mandated by the federal government to cover about 50% of a cigarette package were constitutional. But are all mandated messages constitutional? The current provincial government is mandating that gas stations place on the pumps an anti-carbon tax message. Failure to do so could result in hefty fines. But is this requirement constitutional? The province is also changing the slogan on licence plates to “A Place to Grow” from “Yours to Discover”, perhaps both of them equally anodyne, but otherwise not particularly objectionable; however, the government will be using . . . [more]

The process of digitizing the legal system in Ontario has been fraught with challenges and setbacks.

In 2011, Precedent Magazine detailed some of the efforts to modernize legal records, with the Integrated Justice Project dating as far back to 1996, intending to create a centralized online electronic filing and case management system. These unsuccessful efforts cost taxpayers an untold millions of dollars, without anything significant achieved.

For anyone working in the legal system in Ontario, the lack of technology has added additional cost to the public through unnecessary use of paper and countless delays due to an archaic system. It’s . . . [more]

Last month, BC’s Bill 51, the Environmental Assessment Act (EA Act) received Royal Assent. The new EA Act will replace BC’s 2002 environmental assessment law and will likely come into force in late 2019, after consultation on key regulations.

At a time when the proposed new federal Impact Assessment Act – a relatively modest proposal still making its way through the Senate – is more likely to be in the news, BC’s innovative new environmental assessment law has largely flown under the radar.

Here’s why it is worth celebrating.

Advancing Reconciliation and Sustainability

BC’s new EA Act requires the Environmental . . . [more]

Class proceedings were introduced, in part, to promote access to justice, and continue to play an important role in addressing social wrongs. The Supreme Court of Canada described this in Western Canadian Shopping Centres Inc. v. Dutton as follows,

28 …by allowing fixed litigation costs to be divided over a large number of plaintiffs, class actions improve access to justice by making economical the prosecution of claims that would otherwise be too costly to prosecute individually. Without class actions, the doors of justice remain closed to some plaintiffs, however strong their legal claims. Sharing costs ensures that injuries