Law Commons^™

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

After 'Subsistence Work': Labour Commodification And Social Justice In The Household Workplace, Liam Mchugh-Russell

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this book, leading international thinkers take up the demanding challenge to rethink our understanding of social justice at work and our means for achieving it – at a time when global forces are tearing the familiar fabric of our working lives and the laws regulating them. When fabric is torn we can see deeply into it, understand its structural weaknesses, and imagine alterations in the name of resilience and sustainability. Seizing that opportunity, the authoritative commentators examine the lessons revealed by the pandemic and other global shocks for our ideas about justice at work, and how to advance that …

Conditions Of Confinement In Nova Scotia Jails Designated For Men: East Coast Prison Justice Society Visiting Committee Annual Report 2021-2022, Sheila Wildeman, Harry Critchley, Hanna Garson, Laura Beach, Margaret-Anne Mchugh

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This is the second Annual Report of the East Coast Prison Justice Society (“ECPJS”) Visiting Committee (“VC”).

The purpose of the ECPJS VC is to bring increased accountability and transparency to the Nova Scotia correctional system in light of human rights standards, domestic and international. While the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia provides human rights monitoring of conditions of incarceration experienced by women and non-binary people in federal prisons and provincial jails in the Atlantic region, and the federal Office of Correctional Investigator provides further oversight of conditions in federal prisons, there is no comparable independent oversight of …

Connecting The Dots To Reveal A New Picture: A Report On Indian Act By-Law Enforcement Issues Faced By First Nations In Nova Scotia And Beyond, Naiomi Metallic, Roy Stewart, Ashley Hamp-Gonsalves

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This report originated as a request by the Mi’kmaq-Nova Scotia-Canada Tripartite Forum to research the challenges facing First Nations in Nova Scotia in assuming jurisdictional control through Indian Act by-laws. In undertaking this research, we identified significant uncertainty, misconceptions and confusion around Indian Act by-laws from all parties with a stake in this issue, including federal and provincial government representatives (Indigenous Services, Department of Justice, Public Safety), the police, the public and First Nations representatives. Consequently, we felt it necessary to comprehensively unpack the various issues relating to Indian Act by-laws, from their nature and legal effect, to their development, …

“Vancouver’S Favourite Country Music Pub,” Single Room Occupancy Hotels, And The Context Of International Frameworks: Mapping Vancouver’S Urban Law And Cultural Policy, Sara Gwendolyn Ross

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The public and private spaces of cities, their design, and the urban law and policy that shapes the lived spaces within cities provides a potent example of overlapping and often contested heritage(s) and heritage spaces that may have built heritage merit, may carry a high intangible value as gathering spaces for art, culture, and performance, or may be both characterized by their tangible and intangible heritage merit. The layers of diverging, contested, or interwoven heritage within the same urban spaces can diverge in what they mean to a group, community, or individual. They may represent significant moments of architectural grandeur, …

'More Of The Same, But Worse Than Before': A Qualitative Study Of The Challenges Encountered By People Who Use Drugs In Nova Scotia, Canada During Covid-19, Emilie Comeau, Matthew Bonn, Sheila Wildeman, Matthew Herder

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Background

To learn about the experiences of people who use drugs, specifically opioids, in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), in Nova Scotia, Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic through qualitative interviews with people who use drugs and healthcare providers (HCP). This study took place within the HRM, a municipality of 448,500 people. During the pandemic many critical services were interrupted while overdose events increased. We wanted to understand the experiences of people who use drugs as well as their HCPs during the first year of the pandemic.

Methodology

We conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with 13 people who use …

Submission To The Province Of Nova Scotia On Its Review Of The Intimate Images And Cyber-Protection Act - Leaf, Suzie Dunn, Rosel Kim

Reports & Public Policy Documents

The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) commends the Nova Scotia government for reviewing its Intimate Images and Cyber-protection Act (the Act) and seeking public input for this review. Nova Scotia has been, and continues to be, a leader in Canada for its role in advancing innovative laws and supports for people targeted by technology-facilitated violence (TFV), digital abuse, and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images (NCDII). As these forms of harmful behaviour evolve and become better understood, it is important to revisit this legislation to assess whether it is providing meaningful and accessible responses to such serious social …

Feminist Relational Theory, Christine M. Koggel, Ami Harbin, Jennifer Llewellyn

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Accounts of human beings as essentially social have had a long history in philosophy as reflected in the Ancient Greeks; in African and Asian philosophy; in Modern European thinkers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx; in continental philosophy; in pragmatism; in Indigenous thought, and in contemporary communitarian theories. It can be said, then, that the language of relational theory has taken a variety of forms. That relational theory is broad and captures various threads in the history of philosophy is captured in the main title of this special issue, Relational Theory. That this special …

A Gender-Based Approach To Historical Child Support: Comment On Colucci V Colucci, Jodi Lazare, Kelsey Warr

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In June 2021 the Supreme Court of Canada (the “Court”) released Colucci v Colucci, its second decision in twelve months dealing with the complex subject of historical (commonly referred to as retroactive) child support. The case worked a significant shift in the law, arguably the first major revision to the law since the Court’s initial consideration of historical child support in DBS, in 2006. This comment suggests that Colucci represents a new understanding of the way that claims for historical child support should be considered in Canadian family law. The comment argues that in changing the applicable framework, …

Assistance In Dying: A Comparative Look At Legal Definitions, Jocelyn Downie, Mona Gupta, Stefano Cavalli, Samuel Blouin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Euthanasia, assisted suicide, medical assistance in dying, death with dignity: these and many other different terms are used around the world to capture various types of assistance in dying. This diversity in terminology can create confusion both in academic debates and in policy-making if it is unclear what type of action or inaction is intended to be captured, by whom, and under what circumstances. By defining and contrasting several terms and legal status of assistance in dying in jurisdictions authorizing it, this comparative glossary aims to lay a foundation that prevents linguistic and conceptual confusion.

Protecting Expert Advice For The Public: Promoting Safety And Improved Communications, Julia M. Wright, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Amanda Clarke, Matthew Herder, Howard Ramos

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The drivers of the harassment and intimidation of researchers are complex, widespread, and global in their reach and were being studied across many disciplines even before COVID-19. This policy briefing reviews some of the scholarship on this wide-ranging problem but focuses on what can be done to help ensure that Canadians fully benefit from the work of Canada’s researchers while also preserving the security and safety of those researchers. It identifies policies and actions that can be implemented in the near term to gather information on the problem, better frame public research communications, and ensure that mechanisms are readily available …

On What Basis Did Health Canada Approve Oxycontin In 1996? A Retrospective Analysis Of Regulatory Data, Jessie Pappin, Itai Bavli, Matthew Herder

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The marketing and sale of oxycodone (OxyContin) by Purdue Pharma has commanded a great deal of legal and policy attention due to the drug’s central role in the ongoing overdose crisis. However, little is known about the basis for OxyContin’s approval by regulators, such as Health Canada in 1996. Taking advantage of a recently created online database containing information pertaining to the safety and effectiveness of drugs, we conducted a retrospective analysis of Purdue Pharma’s submission to Health Canada, including both published and unpublished clinical trials. None of the trials sponsored by Purdue Pharma sought to meaningfully assess the risks …

Abortion Rights Beyond The Medico-Legal Paradigm, Mariana Prandini Assis, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Abortion rights in international law have historically been framed within a medico-legal paradigm, the belief that regulated systems of legal and medical control guarantee safe abortion. However, a growing worldwide practice of self-managed abortion (SMA) supported by feminist activism challenges key precepts of this paradigm. SMA activism has shown that more than medical service delivery matters to safe abortion and has called into question the legal regulation of abortion beyond criminal prohibitions. This article explores how abortion rights have begun to depart from the medico-legal paradigm and to support the novel norms and practices of SMA activism in a transformation …

Gender And Intersectionality In Business And Human Rights Scholarship, Melisa N. Handl, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simons

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article, we explore what intersectionality, as an analytic tool, can contribute to business and human rights (BHR) scholarship. To date, few BHR scholars have explicitly engaged in intersectional analysis. While gender analysis of BHR issues remains crucial to expose inequality in business activity, we argue that engagement with intersectionality can enrich and support this and other BHR scholarship. Intersectional approaches allow us to move beyond single-axis analysis, contest simplistic representations about gender issues and expose the complexity of human relations. It draws our attention to structures that sustain disadvantage such as racism, colonialism, social and economic marginalization and …

“No Skateboarding Allowed”: Municipal Bylaws, Urban Common And Public Property, And The Regulation Of “Undesirable” Or “Disruptive Use", Sara Gwendolyn Ross

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The mechanics of daily local inequality and marginalization can be readily observed within the language of local bylaws that govern urban spaces and places and their use — whether these govern the hours and types of use that can be made of local “public” parks, spaces where loitering is identified as unwelcome, or how and where certain activities can take place. While affinity spaces can be, on the one hand, welcomed and celebrated for the mentorship of youth, extracurricular activity, environmentally friendly transportation, or as a skill-building goal-oriented endeavour, the language of bylaws creates an ecosystem equally predisposed to prohibiting …

Pathways To Just, Equitable And Sustainable Trade And Investment Regimes, Tomaso Ferrando, Nicolas Perrone, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Kangping Du

Reports & Public Policy Documents

In this report we discuss what a Fair, Just and Equitable approach to the global, liberalized and hyper-competitive system of global trade and investments should be. The global market for goods and capital affect the life of producers and workers, stimulates the run towards cheaper products and puts farmers and workers against each other. The current vision of trade and investments is based on the silencing of gendered and reproductive labour and is responsible for the increase in inequality and relative poverty. Furthermore, it stimulates the extraction of commodities and contributes to the degradation of the planet, it has a …

Cash Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper, Shiri Pasternak, Naiomi Metallic, Yumi Numata, Anita Sekharan, Jasmyn Galley, Samuel Wong

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Picking up from Land Back, the first Red Paper by Yellowhead about the project of land reclamation, Cash Back looks at how the dispossession of Indigenous lands created a dependency on the state due to the loss of economic livelihood. Cash Back is about restitution from the perspective of stolen wealth.

From Canada’s perspective, the value of Indigenous lands rests on what can be extracted and commodified. The economy has been built on the transformation of Indigenous lands and waterways into corporate profit and national power. In place of their riches in territory, Canada set up for First Nations a …

Submission To The Toronto Police Services Board’S Use Of New Artificial Intelligence Technologies Policy- Leaf And The Citizen Lab, Suzie Dunn, Kristen Mj Thomasen, Kate Robertson, Pam Hrick, Cynthia Khoo, Rosel Kim, Ngozi Okidegbe, Christopher Parsons

Reports & Public Policy Documents

We write as a group of experts in the legal regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), technology-facilitated violence, equality, and the use of AI systems by law enforcement in Canada. We have experience working within academia and legal practice, and are affiliated with LEAF and the Citizen Lab who support this letter.

We reviewed the Toronto Police Services Board Use of New Artificial Intelligence Technologies Policy and provide comments and recommendations focused on the following key observations:

1. Police use of AI technologies must not be seen as inevitable
2. A commitment to protecting equality and human rights must be integrated …

Wolastoqiyik And Mi’Kmaq Grandmothers - Land/Water Defenders Sharing And Learning Circle: Generating Knowledge For Action, Sherry Pictou, Janet Conway, Angela Day

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This report is a summary of the Grandmothers/Defenders’ stories and are interwoven with corresponding news articles, press releases, and other public documents. This is followed by an overview of some of the critical common issues and importantly, strategies for moving forward proposed by the Grandmothers/Defenders.

The Grandmother’s Report is a collection of stories told by Wolastoqiyik Grandmother/Defenders against the Sisson Mine in New Brunswick and Mi’kmaq Grandmothers against the Alton Gas project in Nova Scotia at the event, Indigenous Grandmothers Sharing and Learning Circle: Generating Knowledge for Action, held at the Tatamagouche Centre in Nova Scotia, January 26 to 27, …

J. Krishnamurti And The Contemporary World Crises: Scholars’ Panel Two Session Four, Ashwani Kumar, Nayha Acharya

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this presentation, I describe my journey with Krishnamurti’s existential inquiry at a personal level and in the context of my academic life. I was introduced to Krishnamurti’s work during my Bachelor of Education program in India in 2004. While Krishnamurti was quite peripheral to the curriculum, he became a central focus of study for me during the Bachelor of Education, Masters of Education, and during my PhD. His insights have had a deep impact on how I view personal, educational, and social problems and how I approach teaching and research. His work is central to the four pedagogical and …

The Quotidian And Constitutive Practice Of Police Brutality Against Indigenous People, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Settler Colonialism, Policing and Racial Terror: The Police Shooting of Loreal Tsingine Sherene Razack gives voice to the settler colonial violence perpetrated against Loreal Tsingine, a 27-year-old Navajo women who was shot and killed by Austin Shipley. Shipley, a white male police officer, claimed he was trying to apprehend her for alleged shoplifting. The article, which is brilliantly and compellingly written (as is typical of all of Professor Razack’s work) makes several claims. Most centrally, however, she asserts that racial terror – a violence done at both structural and individual levels – is at the very heart of the …

In The Name Of Public Health: Misoprostol And The New Criminalization Of Abortion In Brazil, Mariana Prandini Assis, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the criminal regulation of misoprostol as a controlled drug in Brazil as a new form of abortion criminalization. A qualitative analysis of Brazilian case law shows how the courts use a public health rhetoric of unsafe abortion to criminalize the distribution of misoprostol in the informal sector. Rather than an invention of the local bench, this judicial rhetoric reflects global public health discourse and policy on unsafe abortion and the double life of misoprostol as both an essential medicine and a controlled drug. In contrast to previous studies, the article shows that abortion criminalization is not the …

An Abortion Law Preformed, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article engages the transcribed testimony of Carolyn Egan and Janice Patricia Tripp in R v Morgentaler as a critical moment of lawmaking. There is something revealing, often amusing, and sometimes devastating, when a lawyer asks a non-lawyer, in this case, a social worker: “What is the law?” The article focuses on those moments in their testimony when Egan and Tripp answered questions about the 1969 abortion law that made the law itself, its rules and procedures, the subject of examination, and in doing so, constructed new meanings of the law and social action in relation to it in the …

Securing Safe Supply During Covid-19 And Beyond: Scoping Review And Knowledge Mobilization, Matthew Bonn, Natasha Touesnard, Brianna Cheng, Michael Pugliese, Emilie Comeau, Claire Bodkin, Thomas D. Brothers, Leah Genge, Matthew Herder, Candis Lepage, Ayden Scheim, Dan Werb, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Background

Safe supply is defined as the legal and regulated provision of drugs with mind and/or body altering properties that have been typically accessible only through the illegal drug market. In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and related social/physical distancing measures, efforts have been made to scale up and increase access to safe supply programs in an effort to reduce overdose and other drug- and drug policy-related risks. However, it remains unclear whether these efforts taken thus far have meaningfully mitigated the barriers to safe supply experienced by People Who Use Drugs (PWUD), both during and beyond …

Transforming Restorative Justice, Jennifer Llewellyn

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

From the global pandemic to the Black Lives Matter, the Me Too/Times Up and Indigenous reconciliation and decolonisation movements, the systemic and structural failures of current social institutions around the world have all been brought to our collective consciousness in poignant, painful and urgent ways. The need for fundamental social and systemic transformation is clear. This challenge is central to the work of dealing with the past in countries undergoing transition and in established democracies confronting deep structural inequalities and injustices. Rooted in lessons from the application of restorative justice across these contexts, this article suggests that grounding restorative justice …

The Non-Lawyer Attorney General- Problems And Solutions, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article, I provide a legal and policy analysis of the non-lawyer Attorney General and recommendations for legislative change. I begin in Part 1 by setting out and assessing Askin and its uptake in the case law and literature. I demonstrate that while the decision in Askin has two major weaknesses, the reasoning is presumably applicable across the country.7 In Part 2, I examine the legal consequences of Askin and its policy or practical consequences. I argue that it threatens the government’s solicitor-client privilege and that it leaves the non-lawyer Attorney General unconstrained by the law of lawyering more …

Reasonable Expectations Of Privacy In An Era Of Drones And Deepfakes: Expanding The Supreme Court Of Canada’S Decision In R V Jarvis, Suzie Dunn, Kristen Mj Thomasen

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Perpetrators of Technology-Facilitated gender-based violence are taking advantage of increasingly automated and sophisticated privacy-invasive tools to carry out their abuse. Whether this be monitoring movements through stalker-ware, using drones to non-consensually film or harass, or manipulating and distributing intimate images online such as deep-fakes and creepshots, invasions of privacy have become a significant form of gender-based violence. Accordingly, our normative and legal concepts of privacy must evolve to counter the harms arising from this misuse of new technology. Canada’s Supreme Court recently addressed Technology-Facilitated violations of privacy in the context of voyeurism in R v Jarvis (2019). The discussion of …

Is It Actually Violence? Framing Technology-Facilitated Abuse As Violence, Suzie Dunn

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

When discussing the term “Technology-Facilitated violence” (TFV) it is often asked: “Is it actually violence?” While international human rights standards, such as the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, have long recognized emotional and psychological abuse as forms of violence, including many forms of technology-facilitated abuse, law makers and the general public continue to grapple with the question of whether certain harmful technology-facilitated behaviors are actually forms of violence. This chapter explores this question in two parts. First, it reviews three theoretical concepts of violence and examines how these concepts apply to technology-facilitated …

Social Determinants Of Health And Slippery Slopes In Assisted Dying Debates: Lessons From Canada, Jocelyn Downie, Udo Schuklenk

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The question of whether problems with the social determinants of health that might impact decision-making justify denying eligibility for assisted dying has recently come to the fore in debates about the legalization of assisted dying. For example, it was central to critiques of the 2021 amendments made to Canada’s assisted dying law. The question of whether changes to a country’s assisted dying legislation lead to descents down slippery slopes has also come to the fore—as it does any time a jurisdiction changes its laws. We explore these two questions through the lens of Canada’s experience both to inform Canada’s ongoing …

Attitudes Toward Withholding Antibiotics From People With Dementia Lacking Decisional Capacity: Findings From A Survey Of Canadian Stakeholders, Gina Bravo, Lieve Van Den Block, Jocelyn Downie, Marcel Arcand, Lise Trottier

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Background

Healthcare professionals and surrogate decision-makers often face the difficult decision of whether to initiate or withhold antibiotics from people with dementia who have developed a life-threatening infection after losing decisional capacity.

Methods

We conducted a vignette-based survey among 1050 Quebec stakeholders (senior citizens, family caregivers, nurses and physicians; response rate 49.4%) to (1) assess their attitudes toward withholding antibiotics from people with dementia lacking decisional capacity; (2) compare attitudes between dementia stages and stakeholder groups; and (3) investigate other correlates of attitudes, including support for continuous deep sedation (CDS) and medical assistance in dying (MAID). The vignettes feature a …