Law Commons^™

Delimiting The Concept Of Income: The Taxation Of In-Kind Benefits, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The issue of which in-kind benefits should be taxed and how these benefits should be valued have concerned tax legislators, administrators, and academics since the introduction of the personal income tax system. Building her theoretical analysis on the income concept advanced by Henry Simons and relying on traditional tax policy notions of equity,neutrality, and administrative practicality, the author asserts that employees must be fully taxed on employer-provided in-kind benefits. To this effect, the article offers guidelines for distinguishing between taxable in-kind benefits and non-taxable conditions of employment. The author argues that the correct method of valuation of in-kind benefits is …

Revisioning The Oversight Of Research Involving Humans In Canada, Jocelyn Downie, Fiona Mcdonald

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

When individuals are asked to participate in research they should be able to assume that the research "is well designed and well executed, that the investigator is competent to undertake the study, that the study will be run efficiently, safely, and ethically and that the deviations from good practice will be identified and corrected." The central question that we focus on in this paper is whether the governance mechanisms that are currently in place to regulate the conduct of research involving humans are adequate to enable those who are approached to participate in research to make these assumptions. This review …

The Allocation Of Profits Between Related Entities And The Oppression Remedy: An Analysis Of Ford Motor Co. V. Omers, Kim Brooks, Anita Anand

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Ford Motor Co. v. Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement Board, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice reviewed the transfer pricing arrangements between parent and subsidiaries Ford US and Ford Canada in the context of a going-private transaction. Its review was the key to resolving the two main issues in the case: first, did the transfer-pricing arrangements understate Ford Canada's profits so as to undermine the fair value of Ford Canada's shares? And second, did the transfer-pricing arrangement oppress or unduly disregard the interests of Ford Canada's minority shareholders so as to give rise to the oppression remedy?

In this comment, …

Delimiting The Concept Of Income: The Taxation Of In-Kind Benefits, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The issue of which in-kind benefits should be taxed and how these benefits should be valued have concerned tax legislators, administrators, and academics since the introduction of the personal income tax system. Building her theoretical analysis on the income concept advanced by Henry Simons and relying on traditional tax policy notions of equity, neutrality, and administrative practicality, the author asserts that employees must be fully taxed on employer-provided in-kind benefits. To this effect, the article offers guidelines for distinguishing between taxable in-kind benefits and non-taxable conditions of employment. The author argues that the correct method of valuation of in-kind benefits …

Queering Legal Education: A Project Of Theoretical Discovery, Kim Brooks, Debra Parkes

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The article has two parts. Part II discusses the materials we reviewed to inform the development of a queer legal pedagogy. In particular, it examines the categories of queer legal scholarship and highlights the contributions of other outsider scholars to legal education debates. Early in our research, we found limited material on queer legal pedagogy, and we discovered nothing that posited a theoretical approach. We did, however, find rich resources written by other outsiders to law from which some design principles for queer legal pedagogy might be drawn. We should note at the outset that our goal in this Part …

Queering Legal Education: A Project Of Theoretical Discovery, Kim Brooks, Debra Parkes

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The article has two parts. Part II discusses the materials we reviewed to inform the development of a queer legal pedagogy. In particular, it examines the categories of queer legal scholarship and highlights the contributions of other outsider scholars to legal education debates. Early in our research, we found limited material on queer legal pedagogy, and we discovered nothing that posited a theoretical approach. We did, however, find rich resources written by other outsiders to law from which some design principles for queer legal pedagogy might be drawn. We should note at the outset that our goal in this Part …

The Duty To Preserve Documents Before Litigation Commences, Camille Cameron

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This paper explores the nature, extent and boundaries of the duties that exist to preserve relevant documents where no litigation has yet commenced and where such litigation can be reasonably anticipated. It uses as the context for this discussion the recent tobacco litigation case McCabe v. British Australian Tobacco (BA T). The duties to preserve are considered from the perspectives of prospective plaintiffs, who need the documents to prove a claim; prospective defendants (and their servants, agents and employees), who may for legitimate reasons have document management policies that call for routine destruction of documents; and judges (and juries), who …

Steering And Rowing In Health Care: The Devolution Option?, Colleen Flood, Joanna Erdman, Duncan Sinclair

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Publicly funded health care systems are often the subject of heated policy debates. All too often (particularly in Canada), these debates focus on the prohibitive costs, the resultant taxation levels, and the questionable efficiency and outcomes associated with a publicly funded system. Moreover, the institutionalization of the system and the entrenchment of its many stakeholders make effecting change particularly difficult. In this article, the authors begin with an assessment of the drawbacks of the Canadian health care system in the federal-provincial context and its resulting gaps in governance (steering), in management (rowing), and in overall accountability (apart from that offered …

The Boundaries Of Medicare: Tensions In The Dual Role Of Ontario's Physician Services Review Committee, Colleen Flood, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this research, we describe and analyse the Physician Services Committee (PSC) in Ontario, focusing on its role in determining what physician services are publicly funded and what services are de-listed (i.e. no longer eligible for public funding). We explain how the PSC's role in determining the boundaries of Medicare is in tension with its role as a medium for labour relations between the government and the medical profession. We suggest that while the values of privacy, secrecy and a lack of transparency may enhance the PSC's fulfillment of its labour relations mandate, they impede the Committee's successful fulfillment of …

The Allocation Of Profits Between Related Entities And The Oppression Remedy: An Analysis Of Ford Motor Co. V. Omers, Kim Brooks, Anita Anand

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Ford Motor Co. v. Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement Board, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice reviewed the transfer pricing arrangements between parent and subsidiaries Ford US and Ford Canada in the context of a going-private transaction. Its review was the key to resolving the two main issues in the case: first, did the transfer-pricing arrangements understate Ford Canada's profits so as to undermine the fair value of Ford Canada's shares? And second, did the transfer-pricing arrangement oppress or unduly disregard the interests of Ford Canada's minority shareholders so as to give rise to the oppression remedy? In this comment, …

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot: Why Mandatory Reporting Of Gunshot Wounds Is A Bad Idea, Merril Pauls, Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

A recent position statement by the Ontario Medical Association’s Section on Emergency Medicine called on the Ontario government to pass a law requiring physicians to report gunshot wounds to police. The Ontario government quickly passed a motion to “introduce legislation to require hospitals and physicians to report gunshot wounds and knife injuries to their local police service.” The goals behind the position statement are laudable: “to assess and reduce immediate public risk and to collect data to inform future prevention strategies.” However, mandating that physicians report gunshot wounds is an ill-conceived response to the problem of gun-related violence. It will …

Climate Change And The Wto: Opportunities To Motivate State Action On Climate Change Through The World Trade Organization, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the role of trade in motivating action on climate change, using the specific example of developments within the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The Kyoto Protocol, the first international agreement with legally binding commitments to begin to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is expected to come into force in 2004. With it, most of the developed world will be committed to modest reduction targets over the next decade. The two largest per capita emitters, the USA and Australia, have so far opted not to join this modest effort to address climate change, and developing …

'I Do' Kiss And Tell: The Subversive Potential Of Non-Normative Sexual Expression From Within Cultural Paradigms, Elaine Craig

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Using a comparative analysis of the equality movements of sexual minorities in Canada and India the author identifies a symbiosis between the subversive benefits of a deconstructionist approach to equality and the practical achievements to be gained by a rights-based model of social justice. The analysis is conducted through an examination of the role that the expression of same-sex desire plays in the legal and social positions of sexual minorities in Canada and India. The author argues that the acquisition of rights can provide sexual minorities with greater access to dominant cultural rituals and that such access provides opportunities to …