Reading Time: 4 minutes You can hardly wait. You are just a few days (weeks?! months?!) away from turning 18. Freedom! You are dreaming of all the things you can legally do. Turning 18 is seen as a rite of passage. The journey into adulthood. The world sees you as an adult. But being an adult also means you are responsible for your own actions.
EMPLOYMENT | Worker Status Pending Arbitration
Reading Time: 5 minutes Unionized employees terminated for cause from their jobs can – and often do – ask their unions to grieve the termination. A termination for cause means the employer has grounds (cause) to terminate the employee. This is different from a termination without cause. After filing the grievance, an arbitration process tests the grounds (cause) for termination.
HUMAN RIGHTS | SCC Rules on Intellectual Disabilities and Equality
Reading Time: 4 minutes A recent Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) case, R v Slatter, 2020 SCC 36, provided a strong statement about the treatment of evidence provided by witnesses who have intellectual or developmental disabilities. Thomas Slatter was convicted at trial of sexually assaulting an intellectually disabled 21-year-old woman (J.M.).
LAW & LITERATURE | Stateless but Not Powerless
Reading Time: 5 minutes The most compelling new novel I read in 2020 is Daughters of Smoke and Fire from debut Kurdish-Canadian novelist Ava Homa. This dynamic advocacy piece for Kurds and women’s rights in the Middle East was also the inaugural recipient of the PEN Canada Writers in Exile Scholarship.
How Inmates in Canadian Prisons Suffer
Reading Time: 8 minutes Mental health crises for which there are few resources COVID-19 lockdowns Overuse of solitary confinement A racialized justice system that criminalizes Indigenous Peoples and Black Canadians A lack of preparation for re-entry into society These are the tip-of-the-iceberg issues faced by inmates in Canada’s federal and provincial prisons. And according to advocates for better inmate […]
FAMOUS CASES | Fraud in 3D: VisuaLABS
Reading Time: 5 minutes Between 1993 and 2001, VisuaLABS Inc. – the company built in Calgary, Alberta by Sheldon Zelitt – attracted thousands of investors, raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and grabbed the attention of the global technology press. The promise of two technologies Zelitt developed generated excitement. However, none of this technology existed. It was all hype and deception. This article describes how the justice system dealt with this major commercial fraud.
EMPLOYMENT | Changes to Alberta Employment Law. Again.
Reading Time: 5 minutes On November 1, 2020, several changes to Alberta’s Employment Standards Code came into effect. Changes include payment of earnings after termination, deductions, averaging arrangements for calculating overtime, rest periods and calculating general holiday pay. These changes are detailed in Bill 32: Restoring Balance in Alberta’s Workplaces Act, 2020. Remember the government’s red-tape inquiry? Bill 32 […]
CONSUMER | When the Doorbell Rings: Direct sales contracts
Reading Time: 3 minutes Your doorbell rings at home. You take a peek out your window. Then the realization hits you: it’s someone going door to door trying to sell you something again. If you’re anything like my cat (or me), you promptly hide in another room until the seller is gone –unless they are selling cookies, of course. […]
FAMOUS CASES | The Inuit Status Case
Reading Time: 5 minutes It appears to me to be a consideration of great weight in determining the meaning of the word “Indians” in the British North America Act that the Eskimo were recognized as an Indian tribe by the officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company which, in 1867, exercised powers of government and administration over this great tract […]
HUMAN RIGHTS | Human Rights and Civil Liberties Implications of COVID-19 Mask Laws
Reading Time: 3 minutes As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the entire world, many governments have passed legislation requiring that face masks be worn in many public locations. This has resulted in claims that the mask requirements violate civil liberties. At the same time, there have been some incidents of individuals being confronted for not wearing masks, yet […]
