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.

RESPONSABILITÉ : Le verdict de non-responsabilité criminelle ne peut, en soi, faire la preuve de l’incapacité du défendeur de discerner le bien du mal au moment du meurtre de son voisin, mais il s’agit d’un fait juridique qui, additionné au rapport d’expert sur la santé mentale et la preuve documentaire, . . . [more]

Governments are among the biggest consumers of technology. Amazon has a whole separate AWS cloud for governments. I would not be surprised if very, very few corporations approach, for example, US government’s database transaction volume. Imagine hundreds of millions of tax filings, border crossings, purchases, sales, emails, surveillance records, court files, and highway traffic data stored, processed and retrieved every year. Wait, strike court files. Those are probably still handled in paper form or through private databases, at least in North America.

If the government is so tech hungry, will it eventually become the biggest user of blockchain? The answer . . . [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. Marakah, 2017 SCC 59

[1] Can Canadians ever reasonably expect the text messages they send to remain private, even after the messages have reached their destination? Or is the state free, regardless of the circumstances, to access text messages from a recipient’s device without a warrant? The question in this appeal is whether the guarantee against unreasonable search and . . . [more]

The next few years are likely to reveal further insight into the demarcations between the judiciary and the legislature, given the election of the right-leaning political parties in Canada’s largest provinces.

With the introduction of Bill 31 in Ontario, the government justified it no no small part on the basis of parliamentary privilege. House Leader Hon. Todd Smith cited the House of Commons Procedure and Practice as the basis for the Bill during the debate on Sept. 1, 2018 as follows:

The exclusive right of the House of Commons to regulate its own internal affairs refers especially to its control

There are some who believe that the 80:20 rule applies to almost everything. Also known as the Pareto principle or the principle of factor sparsity, it suggests that approximately 20% of activity produces 80% of results. Conversely, in approximate terms we have 80% of population owning only 20% of wealth and other such examples in every sphere of activity, and so it goes on. I am inclined to agree.

As I look at law publishing businesses, particularly the smaller ones which are still engaged in print and book publishing, I’m sure that around 20% of their activity . . . [more]

Many Canadians confuse the law when it comes to recording telephone conversations, likely due to exposure to American concepts in the media. Although the Wiretap Act of 1968 (18 U.S.C. § 2511) contains a one-party consent rule, a dozen states have a two-party consent that supersedes American Federal law, and given its presence in California (Cal. Penal Code § 632), it’s likely that this is often the source of the misunderstanding in Canada.

In Canada, we have Part VI of the Criminal Code, which states,

Consent to interception

183.1 Where a private communication is originated by more than one person

The importance of privacy in our technologically driven society can never be overrated, but even then there are limits to the extent to which a free and democratic society can and should protect privacy interests.

The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (“FIPPA”) received royal assent in 1987, coming into force in 1988. The Act was the result of the NDP conditional support of the Liberal minority government that would create new freedom of information and privacy protections, based on the 1980 report, Public government for private people : the report of the Commission on Freedom . . . [more]

When the Government of Canada earmarked $125 million for a Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, it was premised on the assumption that this area will be a future economic growth engine,

Artificial intelligence is a burgeoning area of research with implications for everything from better medical diagnoses to self-driving cars. The market for artificial intelligence-related products is predicted to reach $47 billion in 2020, and the field has attracted significant investment from Google, Facebook, Baidu and other major technology players.

The 2018 Budget reaffirmed this commitment, with one of the five innovation superclusters focusing on artificial intelligence-powered supply chains that would . . . [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) : Les requérants, Stefano Sollecito et Leonardo Rizzuto, sont acquittés sous les accusations d’avoir commis un acte criminel sous la direction d’une organisation criminelle ou en association avec elle et d’avoir comploté afin de commettre le trafic de cocaïne, la poursuite n’ayant aucune preuve à offrir autre que . . . [more]

I’ve been thinking a lot about cybersecurity recently. But when news of the Equifax data breach surfaced recently, I was more alarmed than usual. Although Equifax is the latest of a long line of data breaches where personal information has been stolen, this one was different.

There was the usual furor, of course, (US Senate hearings, questions in the House, newspaper headlines raging, stock tanking, etc.) when the fact of that massive data breach occurred was finally disclosed (a full five months after the breach occurred). More details on the scale of the breach have trickled out since then. But . . . [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)Les déclarations de culpabilité des appelants, impliqués dans un réseau ayant écoulé des millions de cigarettes de contrebande en Nouvelle-Écosse, commettant ainsi une fraude de plusieurs millions de dollars en taxes impayées à l’encontre des gouvernements du Canada et de la Nouvelle-Écosse, sont confirmées.

Intitulé : O’Reilly c. R., . . . [more]

Not always. There was a recent case in which confidential data was not, to put it mildly, well handled. The corporate defendant, a mortgage servicer, was accused of violating a consumer’s privacy rights based on the manner in which it handled collection calls. The defendant protected its customer data with layers of network security consistent with best practices and ISO guidelines. During discovery, the plaintiff’s experts received the calling data and copies of the customer service call recordings.

Both experts had unrelated full-time day jobs. Their expert witness work was a side business run out of their homes. Neither expert . . . [more]