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. Gashikanyi, 2017 ABCA 194

[71] The presence of individual discretion in a system of assignment poses a risk that some may think that panelists will be selected based on their perceived predispositions.[1] An appellate court that utilizes discretionary non-random methods to assign (or to replace an assigned judge) leaves open the potential for manipulation. It is this potential that . . . [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. Canada (Governor General in Council) v. Mikisew Cree First Nation, 2016 FCA 311

[60] I am therefore of the view, for all the foregoing reasons, that the legislative process, from its very inception where policy options are discussed and developed to the actual enactment of a bill following its adoption by both Houses and the granting of royal assent by the Governor . . . [more]

Cars collect a significant amount of information about our driving. That data will increase dramatically as we move to autonomous vehicles – and with more data comes more ways to use it.

This information can be used now to find fault in an accident or convict us of driving offences. Some insurance companies offer discounts if we share that data with them and they decide we are a safe driver.

Cars increasingly rely on electronic systems for safety features, and self driving cars are coming. They will increasingly collect and store data about not just the car itself but also . . . [more]

Introduction

The existence of racism in our legal system is no surprise.

David Tanovich has written extensively how the Charter has still largely been ineffective in addressing racism in the criminal justice system. Faisal Mirza has explained how mandatory minimum sentences disproportionate affect black Canadians, and he wrote this in 2001, before the additional sentences added in 2009.

We can go even further back to 1993, and the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System, which described a widespread and prevalent prejudice against blacks as follows:

First what we are dealing with at root, and

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 première instance a erré dans l’application de l’article 39 (1) c) de la Loi sur le système de justice pénale pour les adolescents; elle aurait dû se rendre à la suggestion commune des parties et imposer à l’intimé une mise sous garde et . . . [more]

1. CASL, Canada’s anti-spam legislation, has been with us since July 2014. It’s a terrible piece of legislation for many reasons. In July 2017 a private right of action becomes effective that will allow anyone who receives spam as defined by CASL to sue the sender. CASL sets out statutory damages, so the complainant does not have to prove any damages. Class actions will no doubt be launched. The sad part is that breaches of CASL are to a large extent breaches of the very technical requirements of the statute, rather than the sending of what most people would call spam.

On June 30, 2016, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and the Minister of Health announced the creation of a nine-member Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation (the “Task Force”).

The mandate of the Task Force was to consult and provide advice on the design of a new legislative and regulatory framework for legal access to cannabis, consistent with the Government’s commitment to “legalize, regulate, and restrict access.”

Over five months, the Task Force consulted with a wide variety of groups and individuals before finally releasing its report . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from seventy 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. Mack’s Criminal Law  2. Blogue du CRL 3. All about Information  4. Slater Vecchio Connected  5. The Stream

Mack’s Criminal Law
Looked like a gun, walked like a gun, quacked like a gun

Dirie and Omar were both convicted of weapons possession offences. The sole issue at trial was . . . [more]

I’ve posted this article on the SSRN: “Access to Justice—Unaffordable Legal Services’ Concepts and Solutions,” for download (pdf). It provides a solution to the unaffordable legal services problem in Canada (“the problem”), so as to: (1) maintain law society management structures as they are; (2) fulfilling their duties in law to make legal services adequately available; and thus, (3) law societies can avoid being abolished. What is needed is to convert the way the work is done to provide legal services from a handcraftman’s method to a support services method. There are parts of the work done . . . [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 : L’accusé est reconnu coupable de fraude pour avoir encaissé un chèque émis par son employeur, une municipalité, afin de rembourser sa cotisation professionnelle qu’il n’a jamais payée à l’Ordre des urbanistes du Québec

Intitulé : R. c. Blackburn, 2016 QCCQ 4482
Juridiction : Cour du Québec, Chambre . . . [more]

Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque: Arabesques and Entanglements. By Richard K. Sherwin. New York, N.Y. : Routledge, 2011. 256 p. ISBN: 978-0-415-61293-7 (Paperback) $42.95.

“We love the image and we hate it. We crave its enhancement and fear its deceit.” (p. 31)

Everywhere we look these days we are confronted with a continuous cascade of images. These visual expressions are often trying to persuade us to purchase some product, support a cause, or alert us to an upcoming event. We regularly see actual and simulated representations and are prepared to accept what we see as . . . [more]

I recently watched the 1998 movie Enemy of the State . It is a spy thriller about a lawyer being smeared by politicians because they believe he has information that can implicate them in criminal matters – the murder of a politician who was opposing a privacy bill that is really a bill empowering mass surveillance. They use sophisticated, unsavoury, unethical, and illegal methods to watch him, discredit him, and retrieve the evidence. No one is watching the watchers, who are out of control.

While like any disaster movie the plot is a bit over the top, it was fascinating . . . [more]