Category Archives: Access to Justice

Let’s Talk About Access to Information in Alberta: Part One

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Legislation Commented On: Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, RSA 2000, c F-25

The Faculty’s Public Interest Law Clinic handles a lot of inquiries from the community that engage with Alberta’s access to information legislation: the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, RSA 2000, c F-25 (FOIP Act). Simply put, there is a high demand for the disclosure of information collected, produced and otherwise held by state officials. The Information and Privacy Commissioner, who serves as an officer of the Legislature (FOIP Act, s 45), is responsible for overseeing the administration of the FOIP Act with the assistance of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC). In its 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 reports to the Legislative Assembly the OIPC indicated the access to information process in Alberta is approaching a crisis. Since commencing operations in 2015, the Public Interest Law Clinic has developed some expertise on working within the FOIP Act, and we would agree the system needs some critical attention. This post summarizes our current observations in this regard and, as the title to this post suggests, we see this as the beginning of a longer conversation. In order to illustrate the process and some of the problems within it, we refer to a request for information filed by the Clinic in July 2017, which is still ongoing, with respect to a creative environmental sentence imposed on CN Rail (see here for details on the offence and the creative sentence).

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The 2017/2018 Year in Access to Justice Issues on ABlawg

By: Drew Yewchuk

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Planning is underway to hold Alberta’s first ever Access to Justice week from September 29-October 5, 2019. Alberta will join Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, who each have a week in October dedicated to Access to Justice. In anticipation, this year the Access to Justice Committee of the Canadian Bar Association (Alberta Branch) is taking a week to highlight some of the important initiatives already underway in Alberta. Every day this week they will be posting information about different justice sector organizations in Alberta and the important work they are doing to make access to justice a reality in this province. We would encourage you to check out their website: here.

To mark the occasion, this is a summary of some of ABlawg’s posts from September 2017 to September 2018, that covered important issues on access to justice issues.

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The Purposes and Limits to a Client’s Right to A Review of Lawyer’s Accounts

By: Clayton Swan

PDF Version: The Purposes and Limits to a Client’s Right to A Review of Lawyer’s Accounts

Case Commented On: Eryn B Logie Family Law v West, 2017 ABQB 339 (Logie QB); West v Logie Family Law, 2018 ABCA 255 (Logie CA).

Recently, the Alberta Court of Appeal addressed an important issue in lawyer-client relations: the right and ability of a client to submit their lawyer’s bill for review. The technical term for this process is ‘taxation.’ The chain of cases that I will discuss begins with a highly contested family law file and a retainer that lasted 3 years. The lawyer-client relationship ended with the client having paid 98.5% of his bill. The client applied to a Master, and received, an order allowing an extension on the time limit for reviewing a lawyer’s bill without being required to provide notice to his lawyer or having to justify his request. The lawyer appealed the order and was ultimately successful in the Court of Appeal. This blog post will focus on the reasons of the Court of Appeal and provide some commentary on what this judgment could mean for both clients and lawyers in the future.

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Open Court Principle: ABCA Agrees with Less than Full Disclosure in Some Circumstances

By: Jay Moch

PDF Version: Open Court Principle: ABCA Agrees with Less than Full Disclosure in Some Circumstances

Case Commented On: Aboriginal Peoples Television Network v Alberta (Attorney General), 2018 ABCA 133 (CanLII) (APTN)

In 2011, Casey Armstrong was stabbed to death, leading to the arrest of Wendy Scott and Connie Oakes, a Cree woman. Scott pled guilty to the second-degree murder charge, while Oakes decided to undergo a jury trial, which led to her eventual conviction (APTN, at para 4). During Oakes’ trial, Scott acted as a key witness for the Crown. On cross-examination, Scott was questioned about three videotaped statements she had made to the police following her arrest. To highlight the inconsistencies between Scott’s in-court testimony and the police statements, specific small portions of the videotapes were played to the jury and judge. Although only parts of the tapes were shown, the trial judged marked the videos collectively as “Exhibit F for identification” (APTN, at para 5).

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Dispensing Speedy Justice: The Supreme Court of Canada & Decisions from the Bench

By: Lisa Ann Silver

PDF Version: Dispensing Speedy Justice: The Supreme Court of Canada & Decisions from the Bench

Recently, I was asked to comment on the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on R v Stephan, 2018 SCC 21. The decision, given from the Bench immediately after the argument of the appeal, took many media outlets by surprise. The media, and to a large extent, lawyers, are not accustomed to speedy decision-making from the Supreme Court. We collectively expect the Court to reserve judgment and then, after months of diligent research and writing, the Court issues an unassuming missive that the judgment will be rendered on X date at Y time. I have often waited at my computer close to the appointed hour in order to immerse myself in the expectation of a new judgment release. For instance, I eagerly awaited the release of R v Marakah, [2017] 2 SCR 608 and R v Jones, [2017] 2 SCR 696, at 9:45 a.m. EST to be first in line to the lines of decision-making, which would, we all hoped, reveal the answers to the perplexing issues raised by the s. 8 issues surrounding the seizure of text messages found on a 3^rd party’s smart phone. True, the Supreme Court could disappoint as reality often does not live up to expectations. But at least we had 200 paragraphs on which to mull over how we should have or ought to have known better. So, when the Stephan decision was rendered so quickly, I began to wonder if this was a trend on the part of the Supremes or whether it was merely my own biases coming into play. I was determined, therefore, to see if in fact the Supreme Court is rendering from the Bench more often than in the past and if so, why.

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