Case considered: R. v. Hape, 2007 SCC 26

PDF version: My Vote for R. v. Hape as a Significant Legal Case of the Decade

When the R. v. Hape case was released at the Supreme Court of Canada, there was some negative reaction in the legal community, but its real significance did not become apparent until recently. In particular, it has become very significant in the litigation aimed at bringing Omar Khadr to Canada from Guantánamo Bay.

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Document considered: Meeting of the parties to the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, Tromsø, Norway, 17 - 19 March 2009 Outcome of Meeting

PDF Version: The Tromsø meeting of the parties to the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears: a comment on three aspects of the meeting report

A few weeks ago (March 17 - 19, 2009) the parties to the 1973 Polar Bear Agreement met in Tromsø to consider the further implementation of the Agreement. This is a significant breakthrough. Apart from a meeting of the parties back in 1981 when the Parties decided to continue the Agreement in force as contemplated by Article X(6) of the Agreement and in informal meeting of the range states in 2007, the parties have never considered the further implementation of this Agreement.

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PDF Version: A Note on Integrity in Treaty-Making & Copyright Law

In the William Howard Lecture delivered at the University of Calgary on February 8th, 2008, Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry of the Government of Canada, spoke about the virtue of integrity in regulating greenhouse gases. He noted that “[i]t takes integrity to strike the right balance and to draw the lines that will eventually become law which our industries will comply with.” Prentice is also the lead Minister responsible for copyright. So, while Prentice used environmental legislation to illustrate his point about striking the right balance, it was not lost on the audience that the integrity of legislators and the legislative process is also relevant to striking the right balance between copyrights and other values.

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