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The Annotated Accessible Canada Act - Excerpt, Laverne Jacobs, Martin Anderson, Rachel Rohr, Tom Perry

Law Publications

An accessible MS Word version of this document is available for download at the bottom of this screen under "Additional files".

The Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, S.C. 2019, c. 10, which is commonly known as the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) came into force on July 11, 2019. It is Canada’s first piece of federal legislation focusing on accessibility for persons with disabilities.

As a piece of federal legislation, the ACA regulates accessibility for those sectors of the economy that fall under federal jurisdiction pursuant to s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. This includes …

The State Giveth And Taketh Away: Public Sector Labour Law, The Legitimacy Of The Legislative Override Power And Constitutional Freedom Of Association In Canada, Claire Mumme

Law Publications

This article investigates the role of courts and legislatures in the design and enforcement of labour laws in the context of public sector employment. It does so by focusing on government employers’ legislative ability to temporarily override public sector labour rights, or to displace outcomes achieved under their processes. This issue is analysed through a case study of Canada, a country which offers constitutional protections for freedom of association, but which is also constructing a highly deferential approach to the constitutional review of override statutes. As a result of this deference, governments have been afforded significant leeway in the use …

Algorithmic Personalized Pricing, Pascale Chapdelaine

Law Publications

Price is an essential term at the heart of supplier-consumer transactions and relationships increasingly taking place in “micro-marketplace chambers,” where points of comparison with similar relevant products may be difficult to discern and time-consuming to make. This article critically reviews recent legal and economic academic literature, policy reports on algorithmic personalized pricing (i.e. setting prices according to consumers’ personal characteristics to target their willingness to pay), as well as recent developments in privacy regulation, competition law, and policy discourse, to derive the guiding norms that should inform the regulation of this practice, predominantly from a consumer protection perspective. Looking more …

Welfare-Consequentialism: A Vaccine For Populism?, Noel Semple

Law Publications

This article is about two ideologies. Welfare-consequentialism holds that government should adopt the policies that can rationally be expected to maximise aggregate welfare. Populism holds that society is divided into a pure people and a corrupt elite, and asserts that public policy should express the general will of the people. The responses of world governments to the coronavirus pandemic have clearly illustrated the contrast between these ideologies, and the danger that populist government poses to human wellbeing. The article argues that welfare-consequentialism offers a vaccine for populism. First, it rebuts populism’s claims about who government is for and what it …

Access Without Fear: A Report On The Implications Of An Awf Policy In Windsor, Ontario For Frontline Service Workers, Gemma Smyth, Rawan Hussein, Erli Bogdani, Zara Mercer, Taiwo Onabolu, Mbonisi Zikhali

Law Publications

This report is aimed at people working in, directing or otherwise administering services to persons without status. It summarises the barriers and challenges that frontline service workers reported when attempting to support persons without status as well as recommendations gleaned from interviews. While fundamental change to immigration policy would be required to fully respond to the needs of persons without status, the researchers took a “harm reduction” approach, focusing on what agencies and policy makers might do to improve services without a restrictive legal paradigm. In sum, we found strong support from frontline service workers for an AWF policy. While …

Diverse Perspectives On Interdisciplinarity From Members Of The College Of The Royal Society Of Canada, Steven J. Cooke, Vivian M. Nguyen, Dimitry Anastakis, Shannon D. Scott, Merritt R. Turetskyd, Alidad Amirfazli, Alison Hearn, Cynthia E. Milton, Laura Loewen, Eric E. Smith, D. Ryan Norrisd, Kim L. Lavoie, Alice Aiken, Daniel Ansari, Alissa N. Antle, Molly Babel, Jane Bailey, Daniel M. Bernstein, Rachel Birnbaum, Carrie Bourassa, Antonio Calcagno, Aurélie Campana, Bing Chen, Karen Collins, Catherine E. Connell, Myriam Denov, Benoît Dupont, Eric George, Irene Gregory-Eaves, Steven High, Josephine M. Hill, Philip L. Jackson

Law Publications

Various multiple-disciplinary terms and concepts (although most commonly "interdisciplinarity," which is used herein) are used to frame education, scholarship, research, and interactions within and outside academia. In principle, the premise of interdisciplinarity may appear to have many strengths; yet, the extent to which interdisciplinarity is embraced by the current generation of academics, the benefits and risks for doing so, and the barriers and facilitators to achieving interdisciplinarity, represent inherent challenges. Much has been written on the topic of interdisciplinarity, but to our knowledge there have been few attempts to consider and present diverse perspectives from scholars, artists, and scientists in …

Causation And Incentives In Updating Courts: Comment, Alan Miller

Law Publications

This paper examines the negligence standard in the presence of intervening causal factors. The court observes the evidence and assigns a probability to the intervening factor in the course of evaluating the injurer's negligence. The court must, under the law, put a substantial weight on the facts in estimating the intervention probability. We allow the court to also put some weight on its own prior. Under such an adaptive approach to assessing negligence, incentives for care are affected by the court's inference process in addition to the usual factors. Courts can generate efficient incentives for care through the choice of …

International Law Influences, Patricia Galvao-Ferreira

Law Publications

This chapter examines the various ways in which IEL has shaped the design and application of Canadian domestic environmental law. It first provides an overview of the importance and the evolution of the international law responses to current and emerging environmental challenges before reviewing concrete cases in which Canadian environmental norms and principles can be directly linked to IEL. Finally, it reviews how Canadian courts are engaging with international law principles.