March 8 is International Women’s Day, and Calgary law firm Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer marked the occasion with a luncheon highlighting the work of the Equality Effect. The Equality Effect – or E2 – is an international network of human rights advocates (including community members, artists, musicians, film makers, health care workers, journalists, lawyers, academics, students, judges and Parliamentarians), primarily from Canada, Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, who are working to improve the lives of women and girls using human rights law. Fiona Sampson, E2’s Executive Director, spoke at the luncheon about the 160 Girls Project, a legal initiative aimed at forcing Kenyan authorities to protect girls in Kenya from sexual violence. I am part of the vast volunteer legal team that is working on this project, which includes students from across the country, as well as lawyers and activists from the Equality Effect’s partner countries. Also attending the luncheon were U of C law students Gabrielle Motuz, Amanda Winters, and Meghan Tonner, all of whom have done volunteer research for the Equality Effect (along with many more student volunteers from U of C who could not attend or who have graduated).
Jensen Shawa Solomon Duguid Hawkes LLP is pleased to provide summaries of recent Court Decisions which consider the Alberta Rules of Court and comment on the application of the new Rules. JSS BARRISTERS RULES provides a convenient overview of how the Courts are interpreting the new Rules.
The fourth edition of the JSS BARRISTERS RULES Newsletter is now available on our website at www.jssbarristers.ca. Our website also features a Cumulative Summary of Court Decisions which consider the Alberta Rules of Court. The Cumulative Summary of the Rules is organized by the Rule considered, and includes an expanded summary of the Decisions including key quotations from the Decisions. The Cumulative Summary will continue to be updated regularly to ensure that it provides an ongoing and current resource for those interested in the consideration of the Rules of Court on a cumulative basis
Future JSS Barristers Rules Newsletter issues will be available online at www.jssbarristers.ca. If you would like to review past publications of JSS BARRISTERS RULES or receive electronic issues of future JSS BARRISTERS RULES via email when they are published, please visit our website at www.jssbarristers.ca.
By: Nigel Bankes
PDF Version: Competing Uses of Geological Space: Resolving Conflicts Between Production and Natural Gas Storage
Decision Commented On: Kallisto Energy Corp. Application for a Well Licence Crossfield East Field, 2012 ABERCB 005, February 24, 2012
This decision deals with the potential for conflict between conventional oil and gas operations and natural gas storage projects.
The idea of resource use or landscape level conflicts is familiar to us in the context of the use of the surface. Consider, for example, the conflicts between recreation and forestry interests, between forestry and oil sands or conventional oil and gas exploration. The idea of competing uses of the subsurface is less familiar but our search for new resources or the application of new technologies to known resources is increasing the potential for those subsurface conflicts. High pressure fracturing operations to stimulate production either from shallow oil formations or deeper shale gas formations raises concerns about the effect of these operations on potable groundwater resources, and proposals to sequester carbon dioxide in saline formations or depleted oil or gas reservoirs raises concerns of sterilizing hydrocarbon resources. The province’s new CCS regime explicitly addresses this scenario through a provision in the Oil and Gas Conservation Act, (OGCA) RSA 2000, c O-6, s. 39(1.1) which provides that the ERCB “may not approve a scheme for the disposal of captured carbon dioxide to an underground formation…unless the [applicant] satisfies the Board that the injection of the captured carbon dioxide will not interfere with (a) the recovery or conservation of oil or gas, or (b) an existing use of the underground formation for the storage of oil or gas.”
PDF version: I Fought the Law: Civil Disobedience and the Law in Canada
Cases commented on: Calgary (City) v Bullock (Occupy Calgary), 2011 ABQB 764;
Batty v City of Toronto, 2011 ONSC 6862; R v SA, 2011 ABPC 269; R v Charlebois, 2011 ABPC 238, etc.
On February 1, 2012, I participated in a public forum entitled “Civil Disobedience: Concept, Law and Practice” organized by the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership. This post is an elaboration of my remarks at the forum on how civil disobedience is handled under Canadian law. I will review some recent cases on civil disobedience, including the Occupy litigation, to examine issues such as whether civil disobedience may be protected under the Charter, and if not, what sorts of sanctions protestors might expect to face.
Case commented on: Minister of Fisheries and Oceans v. David Suzuki Foundation (the Killer Whale case) 2012 FCA 40
A unanimous Federal Court of Appeal in a decision authored by Justice Mainville has largely affirmed Justice Russell’s decision at trial in a case dealing with the legal protection of the critical habitat of two populations of killer whale listed as threatened or endangered under the terms of the Species at Risk Act (SARA), SC 2002, c 29. ABlawg’s post on the trial decision is available here: “SARA has a spine as well as teeth.”