Source: https://canadianlawyermag.com/legalfeeds/author/elizabeth-raymer/archive/2018/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 14:39:14+00:00

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Elizabeth Raymer is a senior editor at Thomson Reuters, where she edits and writes for Lexpert, Lexpert DealsWire, Canadian Lawyer and the Legal Feeds blog. She cut her teeth as a legal journalist at The Lawyers Weekly and continued to freelance for legal publications; she has also worked as an editor for all three daily broadsheets in Toronto and for Rogers Publishing.
Lynn Foley of fSquared Marketing says more respondents to her survey indicated they favoured a lower starting salary along with a lower expectation of billable hours.
A new report has shed light on what today’s law school students value, and what they’re missing in their legal education. Perhaps not surprisingly, they value work-life balance and mentoring programs; more surprisingly, a majority feel they are not being adequately educated in the practicalities of a legal practice.
Vancouver’s fSquared Marketing undertook a survey last fall of law students in universities across Canada. Last week it released the report, Law Student Survey 2018: The Mindset of the Millennial Law Student, which analyzed the responses of 234 respondents from 20 Canadian law schools.
Jill Presser argued on behalf of her client, an intervenor in the case, that a third party shouldn’t be able to consent to seizure or search of a shared computer.
In an important case for expectations of privacy in personal data, the Supreme Court of Canada has allowed the appeal of an Ontario man whose shared computer was seized and searched without his consent.
In a unanimous decision in R. v. Reeves, with two sets of concurring reasons, the Supreme Court found that the appellant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the computer he shared with his estranged common-law spouse, and that the seizure and search of the computer was unreasonable.
The question the Supreme Court was seized with concerned the impact of the estranged couple’s joint residence and the fact that consent was given by only one of the co-residents to search and seize an electronic device, and its corresponding affect on privacy.
The Supreme Court of Canada will hear five appeals this week in its final week of hearings for the year. Canada Post has appealed a ruling that says letter carrier routes constitute a workplace; a proposed class action alleges global price-fixing of optical disc drives by major electronics manufacturers; a seizure of a blood sample is appealed in a woman’s conviction on two counts of bodily harm in a boating accident; and mistaken belief in consent has been raised in a sexual assault case from Alberta.
Administrative law, judicial review: An employee member of CUPW’s local joint health and safety committee complained that only the Canada Post building in Burlington was being inspected, whereas the letter carrier routes should also be inspected. A Health and Safety Officer later issued a directive citing four contraventions of the Canada Labour Code, including that, by restricting its inspections to the building in Burlington, Canada Post had failed to ensure that the workplace health and safety committee had inspected the entirety of the work place annually. Later, the Federal Court of Appeal allowed CUPW’s appeal.
A Quebec man charged with two counts of impaired driving did not bring sufficient evidence to rebut the presumption that a breathalyzer test was conducted properly and must stand trial again, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled today.
In an 8-1 decision in R. v. Cyr-Langlois that overturned a decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court found that the accused’s evidence “was in the realm of speculation” and could not satisfy the reasonable doubt test.
Since the SCC’s decision in R. v. St‑Onge Lamoureux, “it has been settled that to rebut the presumptions in s. 258(1)(c) [of the Criminal Code], an accused must adduce evidence tending to show that the malfunctioning or improper operation of the approved instrument casts doubt on the reliability of the results,” Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote for the majority.
A decade after its decision in Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, the Supreme Court of Canada will again consider the standard of review in administrative law this week by way of a trilogy of appeals to be heard concurrently. The appellants were asked to address standard of review in their submissions, and have been permitted to submit longer filings than usual; more than 70 counsel (including amici curiae at the Supreme Court’s invitation) have reportedly made submissions.
Administrative law, standard of review: The CRTC issued an order excluding the Super Bowl from the simultaneous substitution regime to which it has been subject for many years under the Simultaneous Programming Service Deletion and Substitution Regulations. Under that regulatory regime, the Canadian broadcaster of the Super Bowl made requests to ensure that the Super Bowl was broadcast in Canada with Canadian commercials on both Canadian and American channels. The CRTC’s determination that simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl is not in the public interest means that, as of 2017, Canadians watching the Super Bowl on Canadian stations see only Canadian commercials, while those watching it on American stations see only American commercials.
Paul Schabas represented an international coalition of journalistic organizations as interveners in the case.
In dismissing a media outlet’s appeal against a production order, the Supreme Court of Canada today refined the legal framework for such production orders without substantially changing it.
In R. v. Vice Media Canada Inc., the majority of the Supreme Court found that the 2015 production order against Vice Media was properly issued and should be upheld.
Under the Criminal Code, s. 487.014, on an ex parte application, a judge may order a person to produce a copy of the documents in their possession, with certain conditions: there must be reasonable grounds to believe an offence was committed or will be committed; that the document being ordered was in the other person’s possession; and that the document will provide evidence regarding the commission of these offences.
Suzana Popovic-Montag says the courts recognized that an oral agreement could be a binding contract.
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in favour of the divorced wife of a deceased insurance policyholder, finding that the man’s common-law spouse was unjustly enriched after being named the irrevocable beneficiary of the policy whose premiums had continued to be paid by the ex-wife.
In a 7-2 decision in Michelle Constance Moore v. Risa Lorraine Sweet, the majority of the Supreme Court found that applying a constructive trust remedy would be appropriate in the case. The decision confirms that a person named as an irrevocable beneficiary of a life insurance policy may not be entitled to the benefits where unjust enrichment has been found.
The former spouses, Michelle and Lawrence Moore, had “entered into a contractual agreement pursuant to which Michelle would pay all of the policy’s premiums and, in exchange, Lawrence would maintain Michelle as the sole beneficiary thereunder,” Justice Suzanne Côté noted in her reasons, with Chief Justice Richard Wagner and Justices Rosalie Abella, Michael Moldaver, Andromache Karakatsanis, Russell Brown and Sheilah Martin concurring.
Cameron Fiske, a partner at Milosevic Fiske LLP, acted for the appellant, who had been self-represented, on a pro bono basis before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed the appeal of a man in a tax dispute and employment status case, after the Federal Court of Appeal ordered a new trial because the official language rights of witnesses had been violated in hearings before the Tax Court of Canada during an informal procedure.
In Mazraani v. Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc., a unanimous Supreme Court found that the violations of the language rights of several witnesses and respondent’s counsel before the Tax Court of Canada were “numerous” and had an “undeniable impact” on the witnesses and parties, the conduct of the hearing and even on its outcome, bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.
While lawyers have duties to advise clients and witnesses of their rights, including their language rights in court, “these duties, which are complementary to that of the judge, do not relieve the judge of his or her responsibilities in this regard,” justices Clément Gascon and Suzanne Côté wrote on behalf of the Supreme Court in today’s decision.
The Supreme Court of Canada will hear four appeals this week relating to labour relations (Quebec), a habeas corpus application in Alberta, a challenge in B.C. under the Official Languages Act, and a tax preparer’s conviction of fraud in Toronto.
Labour relations: Modern Cleaning Concept Inc. is a franchisor serving commercial, industrial and institutional customers in the Quebec City region. Francis Bourque was an independent contractor who had been operating his own cleaning business when he signed a franchise agreement with Modern in 2014; he terminated the franchise agreement several months later but continued cleaning for the same customers, including one in the public sector, through his personal business. The Comité paritaire de l’entretien d’édifices publics de la région de Québec then brought an action claiming wages from the appellant on the ground that Bourque and his spouse had been employees and not independent contractors.
In a highly anticipated decision released today, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a proposed co-operative pan-Canadian securities regulator is constitutional, thereby overturning a finding of the Quebec appellate court.
Canada is one of the only developed countries in the world that does not have a national regulator to oversee securities trading, and the effort to establish a national securities regulator — which has been ongoing since at least the 1970s — has suffered a series of delays and roadblocks.
In 2011, the federal government asked the Supreme Court whether Parliament could pass a federal law creating a single regulator and was told it could not, as under the Constitution the provinces and territories hold power over most aspects of securities regulation. However, the court said, a co-operative approach among the provinces and territories would be constitutional, and a Cooperative Capital Markets Regulatory System was then developed by Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, the Yukon, and Canada.

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