Natural Resources
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July 29, 2024
Purposefully disobeying court order comes with consequences: B.C. Chief Justice
B.C.’s top court has upheld the conviction of an Indigenous woman who had been found guilty of criminal contempt of court due to her protest of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline.
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July 26, 2024
SCC’s 9-0 judgment on interpreting historic treaties a big win for First Nations, their counsel say
Live up to the honour of the Crown and its “sacred” treaty promises — or the courts will step in. That might sum up the message from the Supreme Court of Canada to the defendant governments of Ontario and Canada in a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit by Anishinaabe First Nations, who ceded by treaty 174 years ago a huge swath of their traditional Northern Ontario territories only to have successive federal and provincial governments “dishonourably” flout that treaty by barely compensating the cash-strapped Indigenous communities while the Crown and big business reaped billions over the decades from the mineral, timber and other resources of the ceded lands.
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July 26, 2024
Federal Court of Appeal deals another blow to cities’ efforts to derail huge CN container facility
The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal challenging the approval of the location for railway lines related to a contentious Canadian National Railway Company (CN) logistics hub proposed to be set up in Milton, Ont.
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July 26, 2024
Upcoming federal election: What does it mean for private clients?
Our last federal election was Sept. 20, 2021, and constitutional and statutory provisions require that the next federal election must be held no more than five years after a preceding election and by the third Monday in October in the fourth calendar year after the date of the previous election, which means on or before October 20, 2025. That of course means that, while election fervour and fever continue to escalate south of the border, Canada will soon follow.
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July 24, 2024
Federal Court orders gas pricing firm to provide information for competition investigation
The Federal Court has ordered Kalibrate Canada, a company that provides pricing services to Canadian gas companies, to produce records and written information in relation to a Competition Bureau investigation into the impact of the company's services on prices at gas stations.
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July 24, 2024
CN Rail fined $8M for two 2015 derailments that caused oil spills
The Ontario Court of Justice has ordered the Canadian National Railway Company (CN Rail) to pay $8 million in relation to two 2015 derailments that caused millions of litres of crude oil to spill.
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July 24, 2024
Duty of tech competence, AI adoption by lawyers | Connie L. Braun and Juliana Saxberg
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has dominated legal tech conversations for several years, and for good reason. Widespread consumer adoption of ChatGPT and other generative AI products has delivered a host of unprecedented legal and tech risks to Canadian entities. Governments and regulators in Canada and abroad continue to scramble to regulate the responsible use of AI tools, even though their use is already thoroughly embedded in Canadian and global business, government and legal system operations. As a result, the typical Canadian entity’s AI compliance dossier is an unfinished patchwork of aspirational codes and aging regulatory instruments that were designed when Y2K was considered a big enterprise tech risk.
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July 24, 2024
Draft treaty said to mark ‘significant step’ towards self-governance for B.C.-based First Nation
A British Columbia-based First Nation has entered into an agreement with the federal and provincial governments on a draft treaty that it says marks a significant step towards self-governance.
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July 24, 2024
New managing partner for Aird & Berlis
Jill P. Fraser, a senior partner in Aird & Berlis’s financial services group and a long-standing member of the executive committee, the firm’s new managing partner.
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July 22, 2024
Ottawa rolls out ‘special measures’ for people affected by 2024 wildfires in Canada
Canadians and permanent residents “directly affected” by wildfires in 2024 will be able to get free replacement federal documents — including permanent resident cards, Canadian citizenship certificates, Canadian passports and other travel documents — that are lost, damaged, destroyed or inaccessible due to wildfires, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced.