Reading Time: 5 minutes Insurance contracts … are sold by the insurance industry and purchased by members of the public for peace of mind. The more devastating the loss, the more the insured may be at the financial mercy of the insurer, and the more difficult it may be to challenge a wrongful refusal to pay the claim. Deterrence is required. The […]

Reading Time: 5 minutes Introduction How do police detect crimes? Like us, the police do not see many crimes taking place when they are walking or driving around. They become aware of crimes when people report them. They occasionally detect crimes online. Some people communicate with journalists to publicize their criminal activities to the world. These are often riveting […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes Where there is no publicity there is no justice. Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity. Nova Scotia v MacIntyre  , Supreme Court of Canada, quoting Jeremy Bentham The “open courts” principle is as old as the common law. The […]

Reading Time: 3 minutes Introduction  A perennial criticism of the Canadian judiciary is its excessive activism. Many think that the courts have helped fashion Canada into a nanny state and the Supreme Court of Canada is the most interventionist of the nanny courts. The recent case of Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v Wall deals with whether a court […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes “Location is not the litmus test for determining the expectation of privacy.” R v Patrick, 2009 SCC 17, para 6 Introduction In Canada, our home is our castle, at least in legal terms.  We enjoy the greatest constitutional protection of privacy in our homes.  What happens when our private personal information from our homes is […]

Reading Time: 4 minutes Introduction  Vancouver, British Columbia consistently ranks as one of the most livable cities in the world. However, its Downtown Eastside (DTES) community of approximately 18,000 crammed into a few square blocks of social housing units, derelict buildings and temporary shelters – all in the shadow of an affluent downtown – is a glaring exception to […]

Reading Time: 6 minutes This conduct establishes Canadian participation in state conduct that violates the principles of fundamental justice.  Interrogation of a youth, to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel, and while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the U.S. prosecutors, offends […]

Reading Time: 5 minutes “That when a government violates a Canadian, any Canadian’s fundamental rights, and allows them to be tortured, there are consequences and we all must pay  . . .  the question is what the Government of Canada did or didn’t do and that as a deterrent, as taking responsibility, and that as actually avoiding what could […]

Reading Time: 6 minutes A person commits an assault when . . .  without the consent of another person, he applies force intentionally to that other person, directly or indirectly . . . Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, […]

Reading Time: 5 minutes The Crown has a legal duty to disclose all relevant information to the defence. The fruits of the investigation which are in its possession are not the property of the Crown for use in securing a conviction but the property of the public to be used to ensure that justice is done. R v. Stinchcombe […]