On January 6, 2017, The Honourable Glenn D. Joyal, Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Manitoba, gave the keynote address at the Canadian Constitution Foundation’s Law and Freedom Conference. The title of this stimulating and eloquent address was “The Charter and Canada’s New Political Culture:  Are We All Ambassadors Now?” Chief Justice Joyal discussed the roots of ...

This is the secondof two articles Mr. Sirota has written in response to Asher Honickman’s essay entitled “The Case for a Constrained Approach to Section 7.”  Mr. Honickman’s reply to follow.  This article was originally published at Double Aspect, Mr. Sirota’s award winning blog.   As I mentioned in my previous post, I would like to respond to a number of points ...

The law’s ideals and problems have not changed too much in 400 years I have only now read Francis Bacon’s essay “Of Judicature.” Bacon seems not to enjoy anything like the reputation of his rival Coke, in the law schools anyway ― I suspect that they haven’t heard much of Coke in the science faculties, where Bacon is regarded as ...

Earlier this month this Supreme Court of Canada held that there is a blanket constitutional right to access the civil courts. The decision in Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia v. British Columbia (Attorney General) did not make huge headlines when it was released on October 2, but it probably should have. The Supreme Court has done something truly unprecedented in ...

On June 27, 2014, the Supreme Court released a decision that will affect every employment relationship across Canada.  In United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 503 v. Wal Mart Canada Corp., a 5-2 majority of the Court held that an employer – in this case Wal-Mart – is prohibited from permanently shutting down its business during the collective bargaining process, unless it ...