The 2010 Amendments and Hryniak v Mauldin: The Perspective of the Lawyers Who Have Lived Them

Through a survey of 90 lawyers with litigation experience, the author sought to determine the effects of recent amendments to Ontario procedural law [2010 Amendments] and a leading Supreme Court of Canada case [Hryniak] interpreting those amendments. The results were mixed. Most respondents viewed Hryniak and the 2010 Amendments as, overall, positive. But this was hardly a unanimous view. While Hryniak has certainly had effects, most respondents viewed the effectiveness of Hryniak and the 2010 Amendments to be limited, as other factors have intervened or remained as access to justice obstacles. While there was some perception that a culture shift has begun to emerge, the extent of that culture shift has been restricted. The responses did not lack all hope, but they ultimately suggest that the battle for access to civil justice must continue to be waged on multiple fronts.

Making Time for Critique: Canadian ‘Right to Shelter’ Debates in a Chrono-Political Frame

This article engages with Canadian ‘right to shelter’ discourse, with a focus on shared assumptions that do crucial work but are sometimes unstated. It offers a ‘chrono-political’ framework to organize various claims made in the courtroom, in legal academic commentary, and by homeless people themselves. People sleeping outdoors have had noteworthy success in court, preventing immediate bodily peril. However, the ‘emergency’ temporality in those cases ultimately offers a limited politics. The author evaluates proposals from legal academics who therefore prescribe court orders that aim to transcend emergency protection: the state ought proactively to provide some minimal level of shelter to everyone, thereby conjoining the emergency temporality with a longer term ‘progressive’ temporality. However, it is argued that these proposals insufficiently formulate how judges understand their institutional role and the extent to which courtroom doctrine can redirect wider neoliberal trends. Regulative assumptions about ‘gradual improvement’ in the law must themselves be interrogated. As an antipode for the courtroom emergency temporality, a ‘dissensual’ temporality is explored, not as a ‘solution,’ but as an already operant politics, one not previously explored in legal academic commentary on the ‘right to shelter.’ Never to be romanticized, the tent city is nonetheless seen to enact what Jacques Rancière terms ‘dissensus,’ in which participants stage their equality in a way that calls into question the existing arrangement of political intelligibility. Amidst present constraints, dissensus discloses an expansive nonlinear temporality that channels egalitarian predecessors, taking feasible action in the present and attempting to prefigure a more equal future dwelling arrangement.

"Backpack Refugee Rights Advocating" in Greece – Access to Justice through Legal Empowerment

The moment asylum seekers arrive in Greece, they are often denied access to justice on different levels. At the same time international volunteer field advocates or Backpack Refugee Rights Advocates have the goal of assisting asylum seekers to master the difficulties of the complex European asylum process. More importantly they can play an important role in the process of legally empowering asylum seekers. This paper will first analyze the different forms of access to justice that are denied to asylum seekers in Greece. Then then paper will proceed with the concept of legal empowerment of asylum seekers and it is argued that the main purpose of Backpack Refugee Rights Lawyers should be enabling asylum seekers and refugees to know and enforce their own rights. At the same time the paper identifies and addresses several problems of the work of Backpack Refugee Rights Lawyers. Overall, it is hoped that this paper will provide field advocates with information about how they can play an integral part in the legal empowerment of asylum seekers and refugees if they act according to certain guidelines.

Effectuating Change: A Tool Box of Strategies for Reducing the Unnecessary Use of Administrative Court Orders

This article is a sequel to Correctional Afterthought, in which the author argued that Gladue’s promise of reducing Indigenous over-incarceration by employing non-custodial measures has been thwarted. By insisting on alternatives to incarceration, the justice system is forced to rely on administrative court orders managed by provincial probation services. The judiciary and justice system participants possess a misplaced faith in the probationary regime, which functions as a repressive system of control that necessarily views the Indigenous accused as a risk that must be managed. The most common probation conditions, far from fostering reintegration, serve to erode individual autonomy, engender mistrust, alienation, resentment, and resistance; in the end creating disunity and discord. The aim of Effectuating Change is to offer a sound proposal for legislative reform and in the interim, practical sentencing solutions to deliver the true intention of Gladue and its offspring. Regardless of whether the proposals in this article are vigorously critiqued, supported, denounced or modified the hope is that they create a springboard for creative solutions to the problems identified in Correctional Afterthought.

A Former Crown’s Vision for Empowering Survivors of Sexual Violence

Our method for combatting sexual violence in Canada is failing. Survivors of sexual violence have lost confidence in the criminal justice system as evidenced by the extremely low reporting rate to the police. While victims generally wish to hold perpetrators accountable, their reluctance to engage the criminal justice system is a clear indication that the cost (psychologically and emotionally) is too high. Survivors need more protection from re-traumatization and something must change in order to hold perpetrators accountable and deter sexual violence. In this article I propose a fully funded confidential trauma-informed model of victim representation for survivors of sexual violence to better protect their rights and facilitate equal access to justice. I find support for my proposed model by looking to systems of victim representation internationally, in the U.S. Military and in the International Criminal Court. Studies of these models demonstrate that they more meaningfully engage victims with the justice system and mitigate harm in various ways. I also demonstrate why the criticisms of these models are unwarranted. Finally I provide an analysis regarding equality rights under the Canadian Charter and outline why our current process is discriminatory and undermines the equality of women. I conclude that allowing legal representation offers overwhelming value and empowerment to survivors of sexual violence by improving their protection from harm and increasing their access to justice. I further postulate that providing this support to survivors could increase the reporting rate for sexual violence and thereby contribute to reducing the rate of sexually offending with impunity.

Litigating in the Time of Coronavirus: Mental Health Tribunals’ Response to COVID-19

People with mental health and addiction issues are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 given the elevated risk of contracting COVID-19 within psychiatric facilities. The impact of the pandemic on this extraordinarily vulnerable population includes the potential for large outbreaks and multiple deaths. There is also the increased risk of serious psychological harm, exacerbating pre-existing mental health and substance use issues and in turn elevating their risk to themselves and/or others. In Part I of this paper, we analyze the procedural barriers to access to justice that arose as a result of the initial responses to COVID-19 by the Consent and Capacity Board [CCB] and the Ontario Review Board [ORB]. In Part V, we include a brief report on how appeals taken from both tribunals have been handled throughout COVID-19 to date. In Part VI, we analyze the discretionary and systemic barriers experienced by people with mental health and addiction issues appearing before the CCB and ORB during COVID-19. We critique recent mental health law cases during COVID-19 where deprivations of liberty interests and substantive equality have occurred, and access to justice for people with mental health and addictions issues has been denied, suspended or impaired. Through a legal analysis of how the pandemic has impacted this vulnerable community of litigants, we hope this research will result in further advocacy and education to prevent outbreaks and death, improve health care practices, and increase access to justice.

Discrimination and the Private Law in Canada: Reflections on Spence v. BMO Trust Co.

Discrimination has long been identified as detrimental to the basic functioning of multicultural countries like Canada. While governments have adopted constitutional law and passed human rights legislation to combat and control discrimination, these laws are inapplicable to a significant portion of Canadian law. Areas of private law, such as wills and trusts are therefore more vulnerable to use by individuals seeking to perpetuate discrimination. The main way that courts in Canada have dealt with this issue is through the use of the doctrine of public policy. As early as the 19th century, private law provisions viewed as restraining another’s freedom of religion or perpetuating discrimination on grounds such as race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation have been found contrary to public policy by Canadian courts and voided accordingly. While the uniquely Canadian jurisprudence in this area continues to evolve, until quite recently, its trajectory appeared to be one of expansion. However, the latest appellate level decision in this area,Spence v. BMO Trust Co., appears to have changed the course of this jurisprudence. In Spence, the Ontario Court of Appeal found that certain testamentary clauses, no matter how discriminatory in nature, can never be subject to a public policy review. This article argues that while the result of Spence was likely correct on its particular facts, the reasoning of that decision goes too far in its attempt to limit the doctrine’s applicability with respect to discrimination in the private law. Parts of the decision in Spence ignore the key message of past decisions in this area concerning the danger of uncensored discrimination in Canadian society. While reasonable people may disagree on the outcome of any given public policy inquiry, a point that should attract consensus is that the private law should never be an unexamined and impenetrable shelter for discrimination. However, Spence effectively creates an area of the private law immune to legal scrutiny by precluding the use of the common law doctrine that has been used to directly confront and censure discrimination in Canadian private law.

Navigating Power and Claiming Justice: Tenant Experiences at Saskatchewan’s Housing Law Tribunal

This article discusses a qualitative interview project where twenty tenants shared their experiences about having hearings at the Office of Residential Tenancies [the ORT], Saskatchewan’s housing law tribunal. The interviews provide insights into housing problems faced by tenants, their experiences with self-representation at the ORT, and their reflections about the outcomes of their cases. We analyze how tenants prepared for their hearings, their experiences of the hearing process, and their perceptions of fairness throughout the process. We then discuss participants’ assessments of whether they received “justice” at the ORT. The interviews illuminate the ways that the same patterns of power and inequality that produce housing problems in the first place persist but are also occasionally interrupted and exposed in the housing tribunal process. They show also that tenants use the ORT to make important claims about justice and to resist landlord power in the face of larger patterns of inequality and exploitation.

Intersectionality: A Means for Addressing the Needs of Children with Mental Health Issues who are Engaged with the Family Law and Criminal Justice Systems?

Huge numbers of children in Canada suffer from mental health issues, yet only a fraction gets needed supports and services. Left untreated, childhood mental illnesses carry serious consequences for children, families, and society as a whole. This public health crisis is significantly more pronounced for children who are engaged with the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems (“crossover youth”). Crossover youth face multiplicative challenges, including disproportionate rates of mental health issues. In this article, I explore how the failure to provide crossover youth with needed supports and services, and the related dire consequences suffered by these children and society more generally (e.g. deteriorating mental health, repeated engagement in the criminal justice system) is tied to the failure in the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems to recognize the effects of the intersection of the various challenges and disadvantages (e.g. poverty, racism, instability) experienced by these children. I describe the paradigm of intersectionality, and argue that the adoption of an intersectional approach by the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems is imperative in order for the legal system to meet its mandate and protect and promote the well-being of these vulnerable children.

L’égalité réelle et la mise en œuvre intégrale du principe de Jordan

Cet article porte sur les problèmes et les retards dans la mise à œuvre du principe de Jordan au sein du gouvernement du Canada. Premièrement, l’article passe en survol les allégations de discrimination mises de l’avant par Assemblée des Premières Nations et la Société de soutien à l’enfance et aux familles des Premières Nations dans leur plainte de droits de la personne contre le Canada en ce qui a trait aux conflits de compétence et du manque de coordination entre les différents paliers et ministères de gouvernements et leur impact néfaste sur les enfants des Premières Nations. Deuxièmement, il résume la décision initiale du Tribunal canadien des droits de la personne [TCDP], rendue en janvier 2016, concernant le principe de Jordan. En troisième lieu, l’article examine les problèmes et les retards liés à la mise en œuvre de la décision du TCDP. Quatrièmement, il aborde en détail l’ordonnance de mai 2017 du TCDP obligeant le Canada de prendre des mesures concrètes pour se conformer à sa décision initiale. Dans la cinquième partie, l’article avance la thèse selon laquelle, qu’afin de véritablement assurer l’égalité réelle dans la société canadienne, le Canada doit être plus proactif dans l’identification et la remédiation de ses pratiques discriminatoires. En l’occurrence, la mise en œuvre du « Plan l’Ourson Spirit » au sein du gouvernement canadien offre une voie prometteuse vers la fin des iniquités dans la prestation de services publics pour les enfants des Premières Nations.