Online Age Verification is Crucial and Bill S-210 Gets It Wrong

By: Emily B. Laidlaw

Matter Commented On: Bill S-210, An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to sexually explicit material, 1st Sess, 44th Parl, 2021.

PDF Version: Online Age Verification is Crucial and Bill S-210 Gets It Wrong

Age verification is a tool that verifies a user’s age before permitting them to access certain online content, websites, or apps. It is primarily advocated for the purpose of verifying the ages of users and creators on pornography sites. Age verification can have wider application and has been proposed as a solution to an array of child safety issues on social media, including algorithms pushing content about eating disorders, self-harm, misinformation, and viral “challenges”, to luring and cyber-bullying. For example, many platforms ban users under 13 years old and/or have child protection measures for 13-17-year-olds, such as blocking direct messaging, limiting screen time, or curating age-appropriate content. TikTok, for example, has such tools, but relies entirely on user self-verification of age and encouragement of parental oversight (such as their service, Family Pairing). Continue reading →

What Does La Rose Tell Us About Climate Change Litigation in Canada?

By: Nigel Bankes, Jennifer Koshan, Jonnette Watson Hamilton, and Martin Olszynski

Case Commented On: La Rose v Canada, 2023 FCA 241 (CanLII)

PDF Version: What Does La Rose Tell Us About Climate Change Litigation in Canada?

The last decade has seen an explosion of domestic climate change litigation around the world and an equally rich body of academic literature examining the case law from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law maintains an excellent data base covering these developments. Important cases in other jurisdictions include the Urgenda decision (Urgenda v Netherlands (2019)) and Shell decision (Milieudefensie et al v Shell (2021)) in the Netherlands, and the 2021 decision of the German constitutional court (Neubauer et al v Germany). Australian environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) have been particularly active in bringing climate change issues before the courts, especially in the context of proposed natural gas and coal projects, most famously in the Sharma case (Sharma by her litigation representative Sister Marie Brigid Arthur v Minister for the Environment [2021] FCA 560, appeal allowed, [2022] FCAFC 35). Continue reading →

Locating the Constitutional Guardrails on Federal Environmental Decision Making after Reference re: Impact Assessment Act

By: Nathan Murray and Martin Olszynski

Decision Commented On: Reference re Impact Assessment Act, 2023 SCC 23 (CanLII)

PDF Version: Locating the Constitutional Guardrails on Federal Environmental Decision Making after Reference re: Impact Assessment Act

This post is the seventh ABlawg commentary on the Supreme Court of Canada’s Reference re: Impact Assessment Act, 2023 SCC 23 (CanLII) (IAA Reference) decision from October 2023. In the most recent of those posts, one of us briefly noted the majority’s preoccupation with the concept of “adverseness” when delineating the scope of federal environmental jurisdiction under the Impact Assessment Act, SC 2019, c 28, s 1 (IAA). The majority’s preoccupation with that concept actually pervades the IAA Reference decision. Here, we focus squarely on the majority’s treatment of the concept of “adverseness” and its role in the public interest decision-making stage of federal impact assessment. Continue reading →

The Department of Energy and Minerals Finally Releases the Text of a Ministerial Order Delegating Technical CCS-Related Decision-Making Authority to the Alberta Energy Regulator

By: Nigel Bankes

Matter Commented On: Minister of Energy, Ministerial Order 060/2023, Delegating certain powers of the Minister under the Mines and Minerals Act and the Carbon Sequestration Tenure Regulation, to persons holding particular positions within the Alberta Energy Regulator, April 25, 2023

PDF Version: The Department of Energy and Minerals Finally Releases the Text of a Ministerial Order Delegating Technical CCS-Related Decision-Making Authority to the Alberta Energy Regulator

On April 25, 2023 Peter Guthrie, then Minister of Energy for the Province of Alberta, signed Ministerial Order 060/2023 delegating certain of the Minister’s powers with respect to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects to staff within the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). In my view this, in principle, is a sound decision and reflects the recommendations made by the Steering Committee of Alberta’s Regulatory Framework Assessment more than a decade ago. In the interests of transparency, I disclose that I was a member of that Committee. The Committee took the view that while the Department of Energy (now the Department of Energy and Minerals) should have responsibility for decisions related to carbon sequestration tenure and broad questions of policy, responsibility for the more technical decisions related to a CCS project, such as the conditions for issuing a closure certificate, should be made by the AER. The distinction between these different types of decisions had been blurred with the adoption of the CCS amendments to the Mines and Minerals Act, RSA 2000, c M-15 (MMA) in 2010. Continue reading →

Information Shall be Released: The Long Wait for Access to Government Information in Alberta

By: Drew Yewchuk

Decision Commented on: University of Alberta (Re), 2023 CanLII 122872 (AB OIPC)

 PDF Version: Information Shall be Released: The Long Wait for Access to Government Information in Alberta

This post is another installment in the Public Interest Law Clinic’s work on improving access to government information in Alberta. See previous posts here, here, here, and here.

Re University of Alberta, OIPC Order F2023-46 is a decision of an adjudicator at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC), the administrative review body for Alberta’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, RSA 2000, c F-25 (FOIP). The decision draws out an important principle of access to government records: that no refusal of access ought to be permanent. Eventually, all government records should become public. This post provides the basics of when exceptions to disclosure expire and when a request can be usefully re-filed to obtain previously-redacted information. Continue reading →