Canada’s relationship with its First Nations has been in the news a great deal recently, due to the Idle No More protests. Governance is a central issue in current political discourse and it was also at the centre of Gamblin v. Norway House Cree Nation Band Council, 2012 FC 1536. Here, the respondent had approved […] Read more

The majority of the Federal Court of Appeal in Hernandez Febles v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2012 FCA 324 refused to defer to the immigration authorities’ interpretation of Article 1F(b) of the Refugee Convention (as implemented by s. 36 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act).The question at issue was whether the applicant had properly […] Read more

I was particularly taken by Julia Black’s recent Calling Regulators to Account: Challenges, Capacities and Prospects: Since their inception, public lawyers and political scientists have fulminated at the lack of accountability of regulatory agencies. But, though it may surprise their critics, regulatory agencies do not go out of their way to be unaccountable. The difficulties […] Read more

Williams v. British Columbia (Superintendent of Motor Vehicles), 2012 BCSC 1976 featured an unsuccessful argument that the respondent, the statutory decision-maker who follows up on road-side penalties administered by the provincial police force, had jurisdiction to grant Charter remedies. The applicant complained that his right to counsel had been violated because he had not been […] Read more

Decision-making by municipal councillors has garnered plenty of headlines in recent months due to the travails of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (see my posts here and here, and my Financial Post op-ed).  The issues in Ford’s case are principally ones of statutory interpretation. A recent decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal, Beaverford v Thorhild […] Read more

I open with a warning: I find the Supreme Court of Canada’s causation jurisprudence hard to fathom, so it is with some trepidation that I venture out to comment on Alberta (Workers’ Compensation Board) v Alberta (Appeals Commission for Alberta Workers’ Compensation), 2012 ABQB 733. The case is about an individual who contracted asbestos-related disease […] Read more

My essay on the Supreme Court of Canada’s copyright pentalogy will be published around Easter in a volume edited by Michael Geist, the working title of which is The Copyright Pentalogy: How the Supreme Court of Canada Shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright Law (see page 18 here). You can download my paper here. Here […] Read more

For those of you wondering where I have been, I have been partly resting on my laurels since my runner-up award at the Clawbies and partly plotting the overthrow of this year’s winner in the Best Law Professor Blog category, ABlawg, the Calgary Law Faculty’s blog. Normal service should resume over the next couple of […] Read more

Since starting in May, I have now reached the 100 post mark. I am not gloating! In fact, I would not even mark the occasion were it not for the fact that the Clawbies nominations are due in by, well, today. Karim Renno has very graciously nominated me. So I won’t have to cause an […] Read more

I have posted previously about Sean Rehaag’s empirical analysis of immigration decisions. He also authored an analysis of refugee claim data for 2011: Data obtained from the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) through an Access to Information Request reveals vast disparities in refugee claim recognition rates across IRB Members in 2011. In 2011, some Members […] Read more