When a child is made a crown ward, how much access should the biological parent have? While Ontarian courts have had to determine this issue in numerous child protection cases, the analysis was complicated by recent statutory amendments. In 2011, there was a significant statutory amendment made to the Children and Family Services Act, RSO […]
This article was co-authored by Richard Haigh and Victoria Peter. Few things in Canadian legal circles are as agonizingly analyzed as Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) judgments. Scholars parse them for logical consistency, legal reasoning, political leanings, policy shifts, historical and factual accuracy, social context, fidelity to precedent and more. Private bar lawyers read them […]
In the height of tax season, corporations are reminded that regardless of their dissolved status, the government will always get its due. Dissolution does not offer protection against a tax assessment, and second, the dissolved status of a corporation must be addressed before a court is able to hear a corporation’s legal appeal.
Economical Mutual Insurance Company v Caughy, 2016 ONCA 226 [Caughy] is the latest decision in the ongoing conflict between the prerogative of automobile accident insurers to deny coverage when faced with ambiguity over statutory definitions, on the one hand, and the need to uphold coverage where ambiguous cases are coupled with serious debilitating injuries. In […]
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 […]