In what is being called a “David and Goliath” face-off, a small Inuit town is fighting three multi-billion dollar energy companies to protect the marine life of the Baffin Bay from seismic testing. The town has seen support from Greenpeace, Amnesty International, the Green Party, and celebrities like Naomi Klein and Emma Thompson. Most of […]
Approximately one month after the sudden passing of US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rocked the US political landscape, the newly-elected Canadian government will soon face a challenge of its own in replacing a Canadian Supreme Court titan in just a few months’ time. On March 22, 2016, Executive Legal Officer Gib Van Ert released […]
In Bernard v Canada (Revenue Agency), 2015 FCA 263 [Bernard], the main issue was rather simple: Justice Stratas of the Federal Court of Appeal addressed questions relating to the appropriate content of the record for judicial review. Background Information The respondent in this case was looking to strike out certain paragraphs of the applicant’s affidavit and […]
Within administrative law, there are various discretionary bars that are available for the courts to use to increase or decrease access to the judicial system. One such bar is the discretionary bar of prematurity, which is used when an application brought before an administrative proceeding has completed. In such cases, the court can exercise discretion […]
An Ontarian has successfully sought a constitutional exemption from sections 241(b) and 14 of the Criminal Code RSC, 1985, c C-46, allowing him to access physician assisted-suicide (“PAS”). The applicant, A.B., was an 80-year-old gentleman with advanced-stage aggressive lymphoma. Interestingly, this case raised the competing values of privacy and the open court principle. In AB […]
This month the British Columbia Court of Appeal (“BCCA”) handed down a decision in the case of an Aboriginal offender, David Jennings. The accused in R v Jennings, 2016 BCCA 127 had a violent criminal history involving repeated sexual offenses against children over the course of nearly 30 years. Central to the appeal was the […]
The recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in R v Nguyen, 2015 ONCA 278 [Nguyen] on the spousal incompetency rule has now been rendered largely moot as a result of changes to the Canada Evidence Act [CEA] brought in by the previous Harper government. At issue in Nguyen was whether the spousal incompetency […]
Ross-Clair, a division of R.O.M. Contractors Inc. v Canada (Attorney General), 2016 ONCA 205 [Ross-Clair] is the Ontario Court of Appeal’s (“ONCA”) latest decision affecting the commercial construction industry. Commercial construction contracts typically include not only arbitration clauses, but also detailed provisions on how to deal with disputes over additional costs incurred during the project […]
I’ve stopped counting the number of people that have asked me whether I tuned into the “Serial” podcast about the murder of Baltimore teen Hae Min Lee and possible wrongful conviction of her boyfriend Adnan Syed. The popularity of this online version of a 48 hours special spread like wildfire. Fans of the show seemed […]
2015 has been a particularly significant year for the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) in a number of ways, and indeed, TheCourt.ca’s editorial staff has been kept quite busy. Part I of this year-in-review post will summarize the activity of the SCC and the comings and goings of Justices and staff. Part II will discuss […]