Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada's award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one 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. Le Blogue du CRL   2. Environmental Law and Litigation   3. Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada   4. Thoughtful Legal Management    5. Entertainment & Media Law Signal

I mentioned the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in my previous column. Did I spot any law of the future trends there?

For one thing, I rarely if ever heard the words ‘rule of law’. There was a lot of interesting interaction about Big Challenges – economic crisis, environmental crisis, peace and security crises, development, cyber and digital challenges, Arab Spring, innovation, the need for values, and the rise of African and Asia. Rule of law is, I must suppose, assumed to be part of solving all that. But assumptions make me a little nervous. I . . . [more]

One of the stories we missed in the lead-up to the holiday season was the announcement that the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University has created the North American Law Degree program. According to the law school website:

ASU’s North American Law Degree will include:

• A comprehensive curriculum in Canadian law
• A three-year program that seeks to fulfill all substantive J.D. bar requirements in common-law Canada and the U.S.
• The ability for third-year students to take the Arizona bar exam in their final semester and focus on the licensure process in Canada immediately after graduation

. . . [more]

I had the privilege of attending Bernard Mayer’s two day workshop on Vancouver Island last month. Bernie is one of the pioneers and visionaries in the conflict resolution field and his two most recent books (Beyond Neutrality and Staying with Conflict) have transformed my understanding of the field and the roles of people who work within it.

The workshop focused on what Bernie calls “enduring conflict”, conflicts that have a significant enduring element. They are typically:

• deeply rooted
• identify based
• value driven
• embedded in structure
• systemic and complex

Bernie points out that enduring conflicts will not be “resolved” . . . [more]

[And by Meredith James]

According to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver,

Anyone looking at the record of approvals for certain major projects across Canada cannot help but come to the conclusion that many of these projects have been delayed too long. In many cases, these projects would create thousands upon thousands of jobs for Canadians…Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this … Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. 

. . . [more]

Just in time for Hallowe’en, we get the scary news from the UN that the population of the Earth will be reaching 7 billion today (give or take 50 million). According to today’s National Post:

Mounting concern over humanity’s environmental impact and fears that we may not be able to feed ourselves 100 years from now cast a cautionary tone over the buildup to Monday’s milestone.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon told students at a New York school last week: “Seven billion people who need enough food. Enough energy. Good opportunities in life for jobs and education. Rights and freedoms.

. . . [more]

In Friends of the Earth – Les Ami(e)s de la Terre v. Canada (Governor in Council) 2009 FCA 297 [leave to appeal dismissed 2010 CanLII 14720 (S.C.C.)] , the Federal Court of Appeal let the Canadian government get away with open defiance of a statute of the Parliament of Canada,the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, 2007 (KPIA).

According to the federal government, its defiance is no business of the courts, because the obligations in the KPIA are “not justiciable”. The Federal Court of Appeal agreed, but with the thinnest of justifications.

This country signed and ratified an international convention on the . . . [more]

Canadian biotech funding came from diverse sources this week.

Even deals that looked traditional, such as Aquinox’s $25 million raise, included corporate venture capital funds (in this case J&J and Pfizer). These pharma-backed venture funds continue to play a big role in supplementing traditional VCs’ coffers.

In B.C., the government put money towards research on and medical isotopes, while the Ontario government’s OETF isn’t attracting qualified investors as quickly as some would like.

Other government agencies disbursed some funds as well, with Alberta’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation joining FONDACTION, Innovati0n PEI, the U.S. Navy . . . [more]

I can’t believe how quickly time flies. It seems like last year I was being interviewed for a solo librarian job at Field Atkinson Perraton (now Field LLP). I am sure that one of the interview questions was “What do you know about Y2k?” Since there isn’t going to be a computer problem like this again until 2038, I wonder how this last year of the 1st decade of the 21st century will be defined by historians.

Will it be defined by a decade issue like climate change or terrorism or genocide. Will it be something specifically . . . [more]

Just like Google’s Street View feature, which followed a Canadian launch after being tested in the American market, Google introduced this month traffic levels for major Canadian cities after almost three years of use in the U.S. In the past week the service was extended from mobile devices to web browsing as well.

Toronto.com has offered much more limited traffic features for several years, but nothing even close to the level of detail or interactivity provided by Google.

Late this summer Google had expanded the service to include arterial roads, which was a major complaint among American users. They also . . . [more]

Since I suspect that this is something that Slaw readers may be hunting for, here is a copy of the working text of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action on Climate Change for a shared vision for long-term cooperative action.

The Copenhagen website is here .

The Report of the Global Environment Facility is here.

Thirty nine days to go.

. . . [more]

Over the next couple days Prime Minister Harper, President Obama, and President Calderon are meeting in Guadalajara [From Arabic, وادي الحجارة , “rocky riverbed”], Mexico for the North American Leaders’ Summit.

The meeting is part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which seeks to address trade and security issues among the NAFTA partners.

From my vantage point in Guadalajara, the not-so-secret service with earpieces are overshadowed by the armed soldiers in camouflage (literally) hiding in the bushes outside my door. President Calderon is staying in my hotel (“No, yo no trabajo aquí. Soy . . . [more]