In most cases, the amount of child support a parent has to pay is determined by their income. For an employee, this is generally simple to calculate and is usually set out at line 150 of the employee’s tax return. However, many Albertans earn income from self-employment. It can be complicated to … [Read more...]
Human Rights Law and Employment: Does Context Trump Relationship?
Human rights legislation across Canada has similarities and differences. Most legislation covers discrimination in specific contexts (such as services customarily available to the public) and membership in professional associations or trade unions, or relationships (such as employment or landlord … [Read more...]
Senate Study Offers Opportunity for Fresh Look at Charity Issues
Canada, through the federal government and its provincial counterparts, offers preferential tax treatment to charities and certain other public benefit entities that is among the most generous of any country in the industrialized world. That advantageous treatment comes in the form of tax credits … [Read more...]
Are Environmentalists Good or Bad?
Tree-huggers. Greenies. Enviro-nazis. Eco-terrorists. Eco-extremists. City-dwellers. Radicals. Eco-vangelists. Eco-crazies. Sheeple. Foreign-funded __________________ (add any of the preceding epithets). What ARE environmentalists anyway? Are they good, wise, caring, rational, science-loving … [Read more...]
#MeToo and Wrongful Dismissal
Introduction It is said that everyone has their own #MeToo story. Indeed that is exactly the message #MeToo seeks to communicate. I start this column with a story that comes to my mind in this context. This then leads to the main point of this piece: #MeToo makes for captivating human interest … [Read more...]
The Law of Spanking
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 … [Read more...]
Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua: Acquiring False Identities At Great Psychic Cost
Sayed Kashua wrote his novel, Second Person Singular, as an Arab-Israeli. He has since sadly reflected on his need to leave Israel for the US, after years of trying to find a place for himself in a society that treated him and other Palestinians as second-class participants in a country dominated … [Read more...]
Criminal Court Haters, Take Note: What the #believethevictims Movement Fails to Recognize
No one condones sexual violence, harassment, assault or anything of that nature against women, or anyone else. Not the Judges, Courts, or Defence Lawyers. However, the sharp and profound movement that villanizes any participant of the criminal justice system that is involved in the acquittal of an … [Read more...]
Orwell on Law, Order and Corruption in Burma
George Orwell was an outstanding man of letters who is also quite likely the most influential political novelist of the 20th century. Best known for his satiric animal fable Animal Farm, and the dystopian novel 1984, he began his career as an unlikely candidate for literary stardom. His first … [Read more...]
Dispensing with a Parent’s Consent for Counselling for Children
When parents go through a separation, the effects on children can be harsh. Often, children benefit from counselling. Usually, both parents agree and provide their consent for this to occur. But occasionally, one parent will not consent. This leaves the other parent, and the child, in a … [Read more...]