Blog Round up

A bi-monthly round-up of blog posts from the Manitoba legal community for the months of March and April 2020

Clarke Immigration Law

Robson Crim Legal Blog

Matthew Gould Blog (Criminal Law)

Pitblado Law Blog

Taylor McCaffrey

TDS law

MLT Aikins

Michael Dyck Criminal Law Blog

Tom Rees Legal News

Journal Updates

New issues of the following journals are now available through WestlawNext Canada and Lexis Advance Quicklaw.
For members of the Law Society of Manitoba, if you would like to read any of these articles, or if you are interested in any other publications we offer, please contact us for assistance at library@lawsociety.mb.ca.

From WestLawNext Canada:

Canadian Journal of Administrative Law and Practice, Vol. 33

  • Waiting for Godot: Canadian Administrative Law in 2019
  • Undoing Doré: Judicial Resistance in Canadian Appellate Courts
  • Delegated Legislation and the Charter
  • The Quebec Reference and Vavilov–Statutory Rights of Appeal and the Core of Superior Court Jurisdiction

Canadian Journal of Family Law, Vol. 32

  • All Families Are Equal, but Do Some Matter More than Others? How Gender, Poverty, and Domestic Violence Put Quebec’s Family Law Reform to the Test
  • Introduction to the Special Issue: Shifting Normativities
  • Intent to Parent Is What Makes a Parent? A Comparative Analysis of the Role of Intent in Multi Parenthood Recognition
  • Autonomous Motherhood in the Era of Donor Linking: New Challenges and Constraints?
  • Relationally Speaking: The Implications of Treating Embryos as Property in a Canadian Context
  • Faire Valoir ses Droits à la Chambre de la Jeunesse: État des Lieux des Barrières Structurelles à L’Accès à la Justice des Familles

Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Vol. 33

  • Describing Law
  • Equity and Homelessness
  • The Proportionality Puzzle in Contract Law: A Challenge for Private Law Theory?
  • Hobbes’s Third Jurisprudence: Legal Pragmatism and the Dualist Menace
  • Seek the Good: Professional Trust, Justice, and the Rule of Law
  • Deciding, ‘What Happened?’ when We Don’t Really Know: Finding Theoretical Grounding for Legitimate Judicial Fact-Finding
  • Eichmann’s Mistake: The Problem of Thoughtlessness in International Criminal Law
  • Reasonable Accommodation for Age
  • Materially Identical to Mistaken Payment
  • Tax Uniformity as a Requirement of Justice

Criminal Law Quarterly, Vol. 67

  • Gladue Sentencing and Wrongful Convictions
  • When One Innocent Suffers: Phillip James Tallio and Wrongful Convictions of Indigenous Youth
  • Negative Retributivism: A Response to R. v. Ipeelee’s Innovative Call
  • Plan B for Implementing Gladue: The Need to Apply Background Factors to the Punitive
  • Sentencing Purposes
  • ‘Shedding Light’ on Gladue and Section 718.2(e)
  • The Connie Oakes Tragedy: The Same Mistakes and Still No Apology
  • Ipeelee in the Courts of Appeal: Some Progress but Much Work Remains

Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law

  • Review of: Vernon Bogdanor Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution (2019 I.B. Tauris, London)
  • Enhancing Canada’s Democracy without Electoral Reform
  • A Novel and Necessary Remedy
  • Hey Court, It’s Me, the Legislature, Speaking– Can You Hear Me?: Towards a True Dialogue between Courts and Legislatures
  • Review of: Patrick Malcolmson, Richard Myers, Gerald Baier, and Thomas M.J. Bateman the Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Parliamentary Government in Canada 6th Edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016)
  • Reforming the Federal Electoral System in Canada: The Road to Unilateral Amendment
  • Parliamentary Law and a French Version of the Constitution Act, 1867
  • Including Emerging Litigation Comprenant Les Litiges en Voie de Développement
  • Is Democracy Dying? Keynote Address: First Amendment Days, 2018
  • Extradition–What Kind of a Word is That?
  • Review of: Adam Dodek the Charter Debates: The Special Joint Committee on the Constitution, 1980-1981, and the Making of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018)
  • Outcries from the Media Regarding the Vice Media Supreme Court Decision: When Journalists Cry Wolf
  • La Représentation du Québec à la Chambre des Communes: le Dilemme de Demain

University of Toronto Law Journal

  • Introduction: Criminal Law Theory
  • Criminal Punishment and the Right to Rule
  • Civil Order, Criminal Justice, and ‘No Justice No Peace’
  • Civil Order, Markets, and the Intelligibility of the Criminal Law
  • The Constitution of Criminal Law
  • Criminal Law and the Constitution of Civil Order
  • A Democratic Theory of Punishment: The Trop Principle
  • Criminal Law as Public Ordering
  • Criminal Justice and the Liberal Good of ‘Order’

From Lexis Advance Quicklaw:

Queen’s Law Journal, (2019) 45:1

  • Provincial Jurisdiction over Abortion
  • The Daily Work of Fitting in as a Marginalized Lawyer
  • International Comity and The Construction of The Charter’s Limits: Hape Revisited
  • Regulation and Inequality at Work: Isolation and Inequality Beyond the Regulation of Labour The Contested Grounds of Economic Order
  • Transfer by Contract at Common Law and in Equity

Manitoba Law Blogs Roundup

A bi-monthly round-up of blog posts from the Manitoba legal community for the months of January and February 2020

Clarke Immigration Law

Success: Residency Obligation Appeal, February 20, 2020
Refugee Law & Climate Change, February 14, 2020
Success: Regaining Status, February 10, 2020
Success Stories, January 29, 2020
Poem for 2020, January 9, 2020
Lessons From 2019, December 30, 2019
Sponsor Parents – 2020, December 9, 2019
RNIP – Manitoba, December 9, 2019

Robson Crim Legal Blog

R. v. K.G.K, or Rather, K.G.K v. The Canadian Judiciary ,by J Mayan Jan 7
R. v. Javanmardi, 2019 SCC 54 (CanLII), by B Parks Jan 10
Section 8 of the Charter, Our Privacy and Our Devices, by Blairder L.E. Yankovitch Jan 21
Poisoned by Prejudice: Sexual history as inadmissible evidence in R. v. Goldfinch, by J Pelland
Jan22
The Potentiality for Infringing on s 12 Charter Rights by Imposing Mandatory Minimum Sentences, by A Ennis 
Jan 29
Causation and Group Assault,by M Markaj Jan 31
The Charter: A Missing Element, by GS LeBeau Feb 4
A Win for Personal Liberty, by D Kingdon Feb 6
Charter Right to a Speedy Trial in Youth Cases – R. v. K.J.M. (2019), by C Scofield Feb 6
An Analysis of R v Jovel 2019 MBCA 116, by Benderez Moon Feb 11
R. v. K.J.M.: The Jordan framework for delay and the youth criminal justice system, by D Reid Feb 11
Denis v Côté: Balancing Journalism and Justice, by P Gutowski Feb 18

Matthew Gould Blog (criminal Law)       

What is Blood Alcohol Concentration? February 13, 2020
What You Need To Know About DUI Charges In Canada January 16, 2020

Pitblado Law Blog

Pre-incorporation contracts: a trap for the unwary January 29, 2020

Taylor McCaffrey

Sexual Orientation and the Road to Equality, by Jeff Palamar February 13
‘Tis the Sneezin’ – Does the Seasonal Flu Give Rise to the Right to Refuse Work? by Jamie Alyce Jurczak            February 13

Latest Law Journal Issues

New issues of the following journals are now available through WestlawNext Canada. If you would like to read any of these articles, or if you are interested in any other publications we offer, please contact us for assistance at library@lawsociety.mb.ca.

University of Toronto Law Journal, Winter 2020

  • Unity in the Eye of the Beholder? Reasons for Decision in Theory and Practice in the Ontario Works Program, Jennifer Raso
  • Corrective Justice, Coherence, and Kantian Right, Andrew Fell
  • Nothing to Hide, but Something to Lose, Ignacio N Cofone
  • Alan Brudner, The Owl and the Rooster: Hegel’s Transformative Political Science (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), Thom Brooks, Durham Law School

Education & Law Journal, January 2020

  • Religion in Canadian Public Schools: Constitutionalized Anomalies, Diana Ginn, Javier García Oliva, Edward R. Lewis
  • Educator Malpractice: A Tort Whose Time Has Come?, David C. Young
  • Classroom Assessment, Court Cases, and Parental Demands from a Political Systems Perspective: It’s Black Outside the Box, Darryl Hunter, Paul Clarke
  • Graduate Students and Striking Employees: Two Roles, One Disciplinary Process, Emily Finnie
  • No Harm, No Foul in Sex Education: Can Statutory Protections Insulate Actors from Liability?, Lisa Bush
  • Reconciling Judicial Review, Parmbir Gill
  • Courts Miss an Opportunity to Rule on the Privacy Rights of Students Who Join Gay–Straight Alliances, Emily Lewsen

Intellectual Property Journal, December, 2019

  • From Start-Up to Scale-Up Innovation, Giuseppina (Pina) D’Agostino
  • Conflicted Regulation, the Public Interest and Canadian Patent Agency– Patent Agent Regulation at a Crossroads (Part I), Wissam Aoun
  • Having Enough: From Sufficiency to Non-Domination in International IP Law, Dr. Johan Rochel
  • Is the Sky Falling for the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Industry? A Case Study on the Impact of Canadian Copyright Law Reform on the Commercialization of Legal Technology Using Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Cameron McMaster

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, December, 2019

  • Hiring Algorithms in the Canadian Private Sector: Examining the Promise of Greater Workplace Equality, Connor Bildfell
  • Technology, the Changing Nature of Disputes, and the Future of Equitable Principles in Canadian Contract Law, Conrad Flaczyk
  • Subverting Democracy to Save Democracy: Canada’s Extra-Constitutional Approaches to Battling “Fake News”, Michael Karanicolas
  • Flying under the Radar: Two Decades of DNA Testing at IRCC, Ida Ngueng Feze, Gabriel Marrocco, Miriam Pinkesz, Jacqueline Lacey, Yann Joly
  • Privacy Law Issues in Public Blockchains: An Analysis of Blockchain, PIPEDA, the GDPR, and Proposals for Compliance, Noah Walters
  • Developing a Privacy Code of Practice for Connected and Automated Vehicles,  Rajen Akalu
  • Ethical Hacking by Alana Maurushat (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2019), Laura Ellyson

 Journal of Environmental Law and Practice, December, 2019 

  • Funding Environmental Projects with Regulatory Prosecutions: Transparency and Accountability in Creative Environmental Sentencing, Shaun Fluker, Janice Paskey, Fiona L. Balaton
  • The Prairie Resilience: Myth or Reality?, Adebayo Majekolagbe
  • Canadian Public Trust Doctrine at Common Law: Requirements and Effectiveness, Vladislav Mukhomedzyanov

Federal Court of Appeal Webcast re Trans Mountain Pipline

News release from the Federal Court of Appeal:

Ottawa, December 11, 2019 – The Federal Court of Appeal announced today that the hearing in files A-324-19, A-325-19, A-326-19 and A-327-19 will be webcast:

IN THE MATTER OF COLDWATER INDIAN BAND ET AL. v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA ET AL.

Summary: On June 18, 2019, for the second time, the Governor in Council (often described as the federal Cabinet), approved the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project. On September 4, 2019, the Federal Court of Appeal granted permission to challenge the approval of the project on the narrow issue of the adequacy of the Government of Canada’s further consultation with Indigenous peoples and First Nations between August 30, 2018 (the date of the Court’s earlier decision in Tsleil-Waututh Nation v. Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 153) and June 18, 2019 (the Governor in Council’s approval), and related issues.

Access to webcast: The webcast will be available from December 16 to 18, starting each day at 9:30am PST (12:30pm EST): https://video.isilive.ca/fcacaf/A-324-19/english/

Webcasts – Restrictions: All rights in the broadcast of Federal Court of Appeal proceedings, including copyright, remain with the Court. The webcast may not be downloaded, saved, screen-captured, edited, broadcast or distributed in any way, except with the written authorization of the Court. Written requests for permission to use such material may be made to the Court’s Media Contact pursuant to the Court’s Guidelines on public and media access.

CanLII: 2019 In Review

[Reposted with permission from The CanLII Blog, by Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay]

2018 was a tough act to follow, but 2019 was, once again, a great year for CanLII, to say the least. More than ever, our successes are due to the relationships we have developed with organizations across the country that have embraced our vision for the future of free access to law. We are grateful they have agreed to share their content with us and hope to celebrate these relationships with this post, among other things.

Commentary

As regular readers of this blog will have appreciated by now, we’ve been multiplying announcements over the course of the year about new content added to the CanLII commentary collection. Here’s a list of what was added over the course of the year. Take some time to browse, we’ll see you on the other side:

And then, in a more or less chronological order of their announcements on the CanLII Blog, we have also partnered with the following journals, law firms, law centres and other organizations:

As the pace at which we make these announcements increases, it may be easy to become insensitive to them, but let me remind you that barely two years ago, only one of these announcements would have been individually hailed as a considerable achievement for free access to law. It speaks to how far and how fast we have moved that we can now happily interrupt the flow of this post with such a long list.

If you know people who work at the different institutions listed above, feel free to contact them to thank them for their contribution to our site or to learn how you can support them. Make sure to check their open call for papers to see if there’s anything you can contribute to in your area of expertise. They may also be on the lookout for volunteer editors or editorial board members, so there are many ways you can help.

Thanks to the contributors above, we’re now at more than 9,000 pieces of high quality content in the commentary collection. This is more than double what we had this time last year. 

Of course, when we say we now have 9,000 pieces of commentary, this is setting aside for a minute an entire category of quality content. We’re talking about the 55,000 pieces from CanLII Connects that have become more findable than ever

This means that when you go in CanLII.org, you are now searching into a total of roughly 65,000 pieces of commentary about the law, many of which are only found on CanLII. It’s almost impossible that there isn’t a piece of commentary on CanLII that is related to your field of practice, study, or activity. Perhaps we can allow ourselves a notice to law students: if this collection is not mentioned as part of your introduction to legal research class, we suggest you nudge your teacher to update the syllabus.

Another project that is evolving is the CanLII Authors Program. The program was built as an opportunity for authors of published or ready-to-be published texts to add their content to CanLII. After all, who doesn’t want to be findable on the most used legal search engine in Canada? Thing is, as a completely new concept (in Canada at least), we didn’t know if this would work. It’s gratifying to see that there are about 35 pieces that are published as part of the program, and the program’s page was an entry point for other pieces of content that ended up on CanLII over the year. If you have written content (whether or not it has been published elsewhere – assuming you haven’t given exclusive rights), we see only good reasons for authors to republish on CanLII as part of this program. Make sure to consult the (freshly redesigned and simplified) Authors Program page.

This year, we were grateful to have received a grant from the Law Foundation of British Columbia to create a publicly accessible litigation manual for British Columbians. Early September, we launched a call for writers and editors to contribute to the project. We were very pleased with the amount of interest and now have a motivated team of over 20 writers working together to make this resource a reality.

At last, we started implementing a new strategy for the curation of content for the commentary database. We have observed from running analytics on usage statistics (just to reassure you: we use aggregate stats, not individualized ones) that have identified some topics that are frequently searched for and underserved by our current content. Using this, we worked on identifying authors to write a piece on bankruptcy and family law. The piece written by Michael H. Tweyman & Kenneth Hildebrand was published on CanLII in September.

In November, we announced a collaboration with the well-known Slaw.ca blog to develop a collection of ebooks on content specifically identified to answer frequently searched topics.They have now been added to CanLII as a collaborative ebook collection.

Primary Law 

Improving our primary law coverage is always a key consideration and we continued to deliver on that front too.

Historical Projects

In May, we announced that we added over 8,000 cases from the Western Weekly Reports (WWR), a collection of significant cases from courts in the western provinces. 

In September, we added around 9,500 decisions from the Manitoba Reports as part of a project funded by the Manitoba Law Foundation. 

We will write more about what our historical scanning projects of the last few years (starting with the DLRs in 2016) mean for the scope of our collection today early in the year but don’t be blinded by the fact that there we less individual announcements than for the secondary materials: 17,500 new historical decisions on CanLII is a massive improvement and these collections in particular complement well what we did in previous years.

In November, we also announced that we had added the annual statutes for Alberta, from 1906 to present as part of a project funded by the Alberta Law Foundation.

The two projects funded by the Manitoba and Alberta law foundations are very impactful ones and we are grateful for their contribution to improving the availability of primary law from these provinces.

New databases

The following tribunals have been added to CanLII’s current coverage (in no specific order and with their respective neutral citation identifier in parentheses):

  • Edmonton Subdivision and Development Appeal Board (abesdab)
  • Building Code Commission (onbcc)
  • Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists (bcorl)
  • Yukon Residential Tenancies Office (ytrto)
  • Horse Racing Alberta Appeal Tribunal (abhraat)
  • Northwest Territories Assessment Appeal Tribunal (ntaat)
  • Corporation des maîtres électriciens du Québec (qccmeq)
  • Alberta Municipal Government Board (abmgb)
  • Alberta Edmonton Composite Assessment Review Board (abecarb)
  • Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (iccrc)
  • Calgary Assessment Review Board (abcgyarb)
  • Office de la langue française (qcolf)
  • Bureau du Commissaire de la construction (qcbcc)
  • Alberta Edmonton Local Assessment Review Board (abelarb)
  • College of Registered Psychotherapists and Registered Mental Health Therapists of Ontario (oncrpo)
  • College of Dental Hygienists of Ontario (oncdho)
  • Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (oncswssw)
  • Saskatchewan Municipal Board (sksmb)
  • Criminal Injuries Compensation Board (oncicb)

Features

As hinted above, the CanLII Connects content is still at the same home on canliiconnects.org, but is now findable through a search on canlii.org. This way you can see all of CanLII’s content at the same place. We are always happy to have new contributors on CanLII Connects (whether individuals or organizations) and make sure to contact us if you have an interest in helping us build the largest possible collection of summaries and commentaries about Canadian legal decisions.

In June, we have revamped the design of the CanLII.org website and we’re happy to have been able to modernize our looks without (as per the feedback we received at least) disrupting our users’ habits.

As you may have noticed, just before launching the redesigned website, we implemented a quick survey form (that we designed to be as non-obtrusive as possible) so we can collect more immediate feedback from our users and this is already bearing fruit in helping us assess new features or improvements.

In terms of features, there’s really fun stuff coming very early in the New Year which I’m personally giddy about. Stay tuned!

Policy

As part of our policy efforts (discussed in greater detail here) we have intervened jointly with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada before the Supreme Court in the Keatley v. Teranet matter. The hearing took place in March, and we were lucky to be represented on a pro bono basis by Rahool P. Agarwal and Khrystina McMillan of Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb.

The Court’s decision was issued in September and we’re happy the potential consequences on access to law were clearly considered by the Court, who issued a prudent judgment where the majority explicitly invited Parliament to reconsider s. 12 of the Copyright Act. If you want to know more, our friend Kim Nayyer’s summary is no doubt the best place to begin.

There wasn’t a specific or formal alliance between CanLII and the Canadian Association of Law Libraries but I can say personally that it was tremendously useful for me to have the opportunity to engage with members of the CALL/ACBD copyright committee, in particular the aforementioned Kim Nayyer and and Ken Fox, as we figured out our organization’s respective involvement in the Crown copyright discussion. Hat tip to them and thank you for your friendship.

Thought leadership

The CanLII staff continued to post on Slaw with Sarah Sutherland leading the charge. Alisa Lazear also posted a great piece on publishing with CanLII and I contribute my usual ramblings.

Governance / Staffing

Last but not least, we announced that Christina Hendricks was appointed to the CanLII board  and we’re happy to have Christina, an expert in open education resources (OER), among other things, to help us as we take inspiration from the OER community about the drafting of open resources.

On that note, if you are in a law school and you think there could be some interest in working with us in developing content, please reach out. If you are a law student and you would like your law school to create open resources instead of having to buy costly books, we can help you build your case.

Finally, in January we announced that Alisa Lazear had joined the CanLII team full time as our manager of community and content and we are very happy to have her in our team.

***

Phew! Might as well call that an annual report as opposed to a mere blog post. I hope you will agree that we had quite the year… again.

Before you all close your laptop for the Holidays, to:

Our users, to our stakeholders at the different law societies of Canada and at the Federation of law societies, to the staff and boards of the law foundations of Canada who have approved grants (for projects delivered this year or next), to our amazing volunteer board, to the amazing team at Lexum who makes it all happen, to our other amazing friends at Functional Labs, to our friends in law libraries, and to Miller Thomson who are helping us in different mandates of great importance: THANK YOU! We look forward to all of what we can accomplish together in the next… year decade!