New MLRC Report on Presumed Consent Organ and Tissue Donation

An image of the cover of the final report titled Presumed Consent Organ and Tissue Donation

The Commission has released its final report on Presumed Consent Organ and Tissue Donation.

Under Manitoba’s current organ and tissue donation legislation, individuals cannot be after-death organ or tissue donors without express consent. Recent changes to legislation in other jurisdictions have shifted towards opt-out organ donation, moving from an express consent to a presumed consent system.

Manitoba is also considering making this shift, and the report makes 19 recommendations about giving consent and refusal of organ and tissue donation under a presumed consent framework. The recommendations also cover exceptions to presumed consent and the role of proxies who consent or refuse on someone else’s behalf.

For more information on the Commission visit the MLRC site.

Legislative Update – New Proclamation

The Government has issued the following Proclamation:

The Public Schools Amendment and Manitoba Teacher’s Society Amendment Act, S.M. 2021, c. 39

This Bill amends The Public Schools Act to establish centralized collective bargaining for teachers who are employed in the public school system. 

[…] The Manitoba Teachers’ Society Act is amended to require the society to establish a negotiating committee to carry out the society’s duties and powers for centralized collective bargaining for teachers.

The legislative amendments create a streamlined bargaining framework where all items are negotiated at a central table between the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS) on behalf of all teachers’ associations and the employer bargaining representative on behalf of the employers’ organization.

For a current list of all proclamations, see here.

New from CanLII: AI generated subject classification for Ontario case law

A helpful new feature just launched on CanLII.org. Going forward, Ontario court decisions on CanLII will display artificial intelligence generated classification.

The AI feature uses machine learning technology to automatically generate practice area labels. The labels appear in grey at the bottom of a search result, underneath the italicized subject keywords:

screen shot of CanLII search result that contains the AI generated label "Public Administration"

The feature offers a quick way for users to determine under which practice area a case has been classified. The Ontario AI project is the second jurisdiction to receive this feature, after CanLII launched the feature for Saskatchewan case law last year.

Read more about the new Ontario project here.

Free Guide from Rangefindr: Sentencing Guide for Transgender Offenders

Rangefindr.caLegal research tool Rangefindr has recently released a free sentencing guide for transgender offenders.

The guide summarizes material on the sentencing of transgender and gender nonconforming offenders in the following topic areas:

    • Effect on moral blameworthiness and mitigation
    • Conditions of imprisonment
    • Placement in men’s or women’s prisons

The guide is especially timely given sentencing courts recognition of transgender identity as an important factor in imposing a proportionate sentence.

It is licensed under CC BY 4.0, meaning that it can be copied and distributed freely, in whole or in part, if the attribution to rangefindr.ca and the author is intact.

The guide also coincides with the activation of a new tag in Rangefindr: “Accused: Transgender/Gender non-conforming.” This tag allows users to easily find sentencing judgments in which the offender was transgender.

Members of the Law Society of Manitoba have access to Rangefindr’s criminal sentencing resources through the Member’s Portal.

Rangefindr.ca has other helpful publications available here.

New Notices: COVID-19 Update

January 18, 2022 – Notice – Provincial Court of Manitoba RE: COVID-19 Suspension and Restriction of Hearings

“This Notice is further to the Notices issued December 23, 2021 and December 29, 2021. We continue to be concerned about the COVID-19 numbers and the Omicron variant. Given this, and in order to continue to balance the health and safety of court participants with providing meaningful access to justice, we will be extending the court closures set out in the above noted Notices up to and including February 25, 2022.”

“Please review the Notice of January 7, 2022, as a reminder on how to book remote appearances.”

Visit the Manitoba Courts website for all COVID related notices.