Thanks to the Alberta Law Foundation, the Access to Justice Network, ACJNet, a well-known Canadian public legal information and education site, has been comprehensively restructured and re-launched as three attractive web portals: LawNet Alberta, LawNet Canada, and LawNet Français. The new LawNet Alberta portal has some interesting new features, including a Special Topics section that features items related to issues of interest to Albertans. That section currently includes information on topics such as “Full Body Scanners in Airports”, “Grandparents’ Rights” and “Privacy and Facebook.”
PDF version: Is R v Gomboc really only about a homeowner’s expectation of privacy or is there more to it?
Case commented on: R. v. Gomboc, 2010 SCC 55
The late November 2010 decision of Canada’s Supreme Court in R. v. Gomboc has come to represent one of two things in the divergent views of its critics and supporters. For critics from a civil libertarian perspective, our highest court’s approval of a power company’s act, pursuant to a warrantless police request, of monitoring a homeowner’s electrical usage and then providing that information to police engaged in a criminal investigation represents yet another example of a culture of authoritarianism that seems to be creeping into Canada’s judiciary. On the other hand, for the “law and order” crowd, especially those who see warrants as pesky obstacles to simply letting the police get on with it and just do their jobs, homeowners have no reasonable expectation of privacy over information about their electrical usage, so the Supreme Court’s decision that an authorizing warrant was not required is spot on. Furthermore, even if there was a breach of any privacy interest a person may have here, then it was so trivial that any fuss over it is unwarranted.
PDF version: SARA has a spine as well as teeth
Case commented on: David Suzuki Foundation v. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Minister of the Environment, 2010 FC 1233
Eighteen months ago I blogged on Justice Zinn’s decision in Alberta Wilderness Association v. Canada (Minister of the Environment), 2009 FC 710. The decision dealt with the government’s failure to designate critical habitat for the greater sage grouse under the federal Species at Risk Act, S.C. 2002, c. 29 (SARA) as part of the development of a recovery plan. I thought that Justice Zinn’s decision confirmed that the Courts were prepared to give SARA a fairly robust interpretation and hence I suggested that the legislation was starting to “grow teeth”.
PDF version: Sliding Down the Slippery Slope
Case considered: R. v. Loewen, 2010 ABCA 255
In the area of national security, the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, have been characterized by an increased dominance of state power in terms of investigation, interrogation, and detention powers, often at the expense of individual liberties. This dominance has become entrenched in some respects in Canada, as well as in a number of other democratic nations, and in many ways has become so familiar that it arguably represents a new normal, rather than an extraordinary situation.
It is my belief that, while this shift has attracted most attention in the national security arena, and is primarily advanced in that arena, the increasing acceptance that individual rights must give way to state security interests sets the stage for the proverbial slippery slope, lending credibility to arguments for the erosions of individual rights in more traditional criminal matters as well. As an example, the increasing tendency of national governments to allow for warrantless searches in cases in which terrorism is alleged may arguably have served as an undercurrent for the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Gomboc, 2010 SCC 55 (overturning a ruling by the Alberta Court of Appeal and upholding a warrantless request by Calgary police to an electrical company to install a recording device, designed to measure electrical usage, to determine whether the person under investigation was growing marijuana).
PDF version: Accommodation for Family Status Required by Federal Human Rights Tribunal for Three Alberta Women
Cases considered: Cindy Richards v Canadian National Railway, 2010 CHRT 24; Kasha Whyte v Canadian National Railway, 2010 CHRT 22; Denise Seeley v Canadian National Railway, 2010 CHRT 23
Family status was added in 1996 as a protected ground under Alberta’s human rights legislation (currently the Alberta Human Rights Act, RSA 2000, c A-25.5, (AHRA)). Under the AHRA, family status is defined as: “the status of being related to another person by blood, marriage or adoption” (section 44(1)(f)). Family status is also a protected ground in several other jurisdictions, including federally. Three recent and related decisions of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal indicate that under the ground of family status, employers will be required to accommodate parental responsibilities.