Access to Justice
-
May 30, 2025
CIVIL PROCEDURE - Parties - Class or representative actions - Certification - Common interests and issues
Appeal by Michel (Appellant) from a court order dismissing the plaintiffs’ motion to certify an action against the respondent as a class proceeding.
-
May 30, 2025
B.C. legal institute hopes to increase understanding of economic abuse in family law
The British Columbia Law Institute (BCLI) is looking to shed some light on an issue that it says has been seriously under-explored in legal literature and case law — economic abuse in family law, especially as it relates to family businesses.
-
May 30, 2025
Lack of remorse, restitution failure inform N.S. Supreme Court lobster fraud conviction
“How many families get destroyed because of Terry f--king Banks?” Those were the words of one of three men who stopped by the cottage of Beaverdam Lake, N.S., lobster dealer Wayne Banks, who was recorded on a tape subsequently turned over to CBC News. The visitors complained that, over about 10 days, someone had defrauded them for approximately $1.6 million.
-
May 30, 2025
DND says it now offers independent legal advice to victims of sexual misconduct in the military
The Department of National Defence (DND) says it has expanded the services of its Sexual Misconduct Support and Resource Centre to offer “independent” and “direct” free legal assistance to those 18 years and older, who have experienced sexual misconduct in a DND or Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) “context.”
-
May 30, 2025
N.L. accepting grant proposals for violence prevention program
The government of Newfoundland and Labrador is inviting proposals for its 2025 Community Violence Prevention Grants Program.
-
May 28, 2025
Justice minister defends Trudeau bail reforms, but throne speech confirms new restrictions coming
The official Opposition Conservatives have renewed calls to repeal the Trudeau government’s so-called “catch and release” bail reforms, but the new Carney government is defending the changes while pledging to legislate new bail restrictions for certain crimes and repeat offenders.
-
May 29, 2025
Is it a rabbit or a duck? Why lawyers must be storytellers
Every lawyer has been there. We have laid out the facts. We have cited the law. We have prepared what we believe is a clear and persuasive argument. And yet the court saw something else — something that seems, at first glance, unrecognizable.
-
May 29, 2025
Alberta Court replaces house arrest with prison, citing court’s role in setting ‘new direction’
Readers of the Nov. 23, 2021, edition of the Edmonton Journal learned about the results of a two-year investigation by the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT) known as Project Elk. Eight individuals from Edmonton were arrested and charged with various offences, including those related to drugs and firearms, criminal conspiracy and organized crime.
-
May 28, 2025
Zooming into the future
I have often expressed my conviction (as a former prosecutor, I love that word) that the courtroom is the last bastion of respect for authority today. All other authority figures — politicians, religious leaders, police officers, teachers and sadly, even parents — have lost their respect in today’s selfie world.
-
May 28, 2025
Truck driving school was treated unfairly by career college authority, Ontario court rules
Ontario’s superintendent of career colleges Charlotte Smaglinski violated procedural fairness when she forfeited a truck driving school’s $97,000 security bond without notice, forcing the family-run school out of business, an Ontario court has ruled.
Access to justice: The language of the litigant counts | Ruphine Djuissi
Access to justice in French is a critical issue for Francophones across Canada, particularly with respect to the availability of legal services in French, the quality of interpretation and translation, and equal language rights. It also includes access to French-speaking lawyers and court documents written in French. It is important to ensure that Francophones have access to legal services in their mother tongue or first official language.
Ontario committed to expanding Unified Family Courts but Toronto still lacking
Ontario’s government is vowing to continue working towards the expansion of Unified Family Courts across the province. But a local lawyer says that until a UFC is placed in the Toronto area, millions are being left to navigate a confusing, “two-tiered” family court system.