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May 13, 2026
Case planning conferences and judicial management conferences in civil and family proceedings in British Columbia will now, by default, be held by videoconference, according to a May 13 release.
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May 13, 2026
Practising in rural Ontario and the North gives me a perspective on the access-to-justice crisis we are currently facing. Many vulnerable people face child protection proceedings while also dealing with addiction, poverty, mental health challenges and isolation. These are real, human stories, families at risk of being separated, children caught in uncertainty and communities trying to help with fewer resources.
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May 13, 2026
Bernie Herman, a married man and a 30-year RCMP officer, was charged with the first-degree murder of Braden Herman, his intimate same-sex partner.
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May 12, 2026
The choice in the expression “Fear has two meanings: Forget everything and run, or face everything and rise” could underpin two different approaches taken by the Northwest Territories Court of Appeal in assessing a dangerous driving charge resulting in a death.
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May 11, 2026
Ontario’s Justice Centres are being recognized with the Ontario Bar Association’s (OBA) President’s Award for their innovative community court model.
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May 11, 2026
Three and a half years ago, I wrote in this column about the dangers of forcing treatment on people with serious mental health issues as a condition of keeping them living in the community.
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May 08, 2026
The Ontario Trial Lawyers Association (OTLA) has elected K. Jay Ralston as its president for the 2026–27 term.
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May 08, 2026
Spoiler Alert: The following contains plot details from Better Call Saul. Charles McGill, the decorated senior partner in the TV series Better Call Saul, is everything the legal profession tells itself it stands for: principled, authoritative, a guardian of the rule of law. His younger brother Jimmy — the poor, hustling, desperate Saul Goodman — represents everything the profession looks down on. But as artificial intelligence dismantles the gatekeeping function that long justified the legal profession’s self-image, it is worth asking: which one of them is a more accurate reflection of a lawyer?
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May 07, 2026
Saskatchewan has passed new provincial prison legislation that will have justices of the peace decide on “major disciplinary matters” involving inmates.
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May 07, 2026
There may be a new sheriff in town. The provincial government in Ontario plans to introduce regulations designating transit special constables as “officers” under the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act, 2025 (RPCISA). This move will grant them sweeping powers to arrest and detain individuals and to search, seize and even destroy property.
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May 07, 2026
A recent report by Global News, drawing on freedom-of-information materials obtained by Donna Power and the Humane Initiative, adds an important and deeply troubling dimension to concerns I raised several weeks ago about Ontario’s animal welfare regime.
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May 07, 2026
Substantive law defines what constitutes a crime, while procedural law dictates how the case is handled. A conviction requires both evidence proving guilt and adherence to proper procedure to ensure a fair trial. Sometimes, the substance is so glaring that the focus on trial fairness can take a back seat.
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May 06, 2026
New Brunswick has proposed legislation aimed at improving patient safety and “quality of care” through the establishment of an advisory committee, the clarifying of what is meant by “safety incidents” and improving the use of data in tracking trends.
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May 06, 2026
The Government of Alberta is investing $8.9 million to build Western Canada’s “first provincial forensic DNA laboratory to speed up investigations and support prosecutions.”
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May 05, 2026
Last week, as I write this on May 4, 2026, I watched part of a press conference that made me want to puke.
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May 04, 2026
Sometimes it is not a defence lawyer who is responsible for an acquittal. Sometimes an acquittal may result from police actions.
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May 04, 2026
Let’s start with the burdens of proof in the 2021 amendments which I discussed in my October 2025 article (“Bill C-223: Bad ideas on child relocation”). The burdens of proof are intended to give structure to the analysis of the best interests of the child, based upon what we do and don’t know about the impact of relocation upon children.
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May 04, 2026
First-year property law, 1988. Two hundred students. I could feel the energy in the room of young people excited to have made it into UBC law school. Professor Tod enters and slams the door. Walks over to the podium and scans the room while saying, “All title is vested in the Crown.” I felt like he was looking directly at me or even searching for visibly First Nation students as if to say, “We will not be tolerating any uppity Indians in this course!”
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May 04, 2026
Roughly every four years, voters elect a government and grant it significant powers and responsibilities. But winning an election does not mean one has been given carte blanche to act as they see fit until the next election. Governments must exercise public power in accordance with the Constitution, and voters have the right to know how elected officials are using this power. Ontario’s rushed amendments to freedom of information and privacy laws enacted a few days ago through the government’s Bill 97, Plan to Protect Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2026 directly attack both of these fundamental democratic principles.
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May 01, 2026
The Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed there was an unjustified infringement on Quebec residents’ voting rights due to a law that interrupts the process of determining electoral boundaries.
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May 01, 2026
I wrote about Bill C-223’s proposed relocation changes in October 2025 (“Bill C-223: Bad ideas on child relocation”). Law360 Canada published a two-part defence of the bill by Suzanne Zaccour and Joanne Moser on April 22-23, 2026 (“Relocation law is stacked against mothers — Bill C-223 can fix it”; “Relocation law is stacked against mothers — Bill C-223 can fix it: Addressing bias”). Zaccour is one of the architects of the bill, in her role at the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL).
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April 30, 2026
British Columbia is expanding its early resolution process for family law matters to 35 additional provincial court locations, aiming to help more families resolve disputes outside of court and reduce pressure on the court system.
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April 30, 2026
Saskatchewan is investing more than $1 million in restorative justice programs for schools in a bid to tackle bullying and other types of student “conflict.”
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April 29, 2026
Michael Morris was convicted of sexual assault, sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching by a jury in 2023. He was sentenced to 1,816 days (just short of five years, with credit for pretrial custody) in a penitentiary, plus ancillary orders.
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April 29, 2026
After reading rebuttals from Russell Alexander, Gary Joseph, Roslyn Tsao and Aaron Franks to my article on the recent return to in-person motions in Toronto’s family court, “The Zoom paradox: When a judge’s words and his court’s actions collide,” I have been moved.