Nova Scotia Law Reform Institute Discussion Paper on Intestate Succession Act

The Access to Justice & Law Reform Institute of Nova Scotia has published a discussion paper on the province's Intestate Succession Act:

"This Discussion Paper considers how a deceased person’s real and personal property should be disposed of if they die without a will (otherwise known as intestacy). The Intestate Succession Act RSNS 1989, c 236 governs the disposition of these estates in Nova Scotia. While it’s underlying function remains valid, the Act no longer reflects the legal, social, and economic landscape faced by Nova Scotians today. Reforms are needed to align the law with the modern Canadian family, harmonize it with other relevant statutes, and enhance the ability of Nova Scotians to access justice (...) "

"The Discussion Paper seeks input on the following proposals to enhance individual autonomy and address the root causes of intestacy:

• The public should be given easily accessible information on intestacy. Public legal education on the reformed Intestate Succession Act should be available to ensure Nova Scotians understand how intestate property is distributed. Updated, easy-to-understand manuals should be available to persons who are administering an intestate estate without legal representation.
• The public should have greater access to will drafting services for persons who wish to create a will but cannot afford to hire a lawyer.
• Lawyers should be provided with information and materials on how to support capacity when providing wills services for persons who may face challenges in their mental capacity.
• A simplified procedure for estates valued at $50,000 or less should be available to administer modest intestate estates."

The Institute is funded by the Government of Nova Scotia, the Government of Canada, and by the Law Foundation of Nova Scotia with in kind support from the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society and Dalhousie University.

Law Society of Ontario Makes CPD Materials Available for Free

The Law Society of Ontario (LSO) has made its continuing professional development materials freely available on its AccessCLE website.

As explained on the blog of the Great Library (the LSO's library):

"Continuing professional development (CPD) program materials are an invaluable source of current legal information. Papers typically cover the practical implications of recent case law and legislative developments, and often include useful precedents, procedure and checklists."

"You’ll find Law Society CPD papers from 2004 to the current month on AccessCLE. This free resource lets you browse for programs and papers by area of law and year, or search the full-text of these materials by keyword."

Profile of British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal

Legal Evolution, a publication founded in 2017 by Bill Henderson, Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, recently published an article entitled Is access to justice a design problem?

It profiles British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal, Canada’s first online dispute resolution:

"Several years ago, if someone asked me how to solve the U.S. access to justice problem, I would have replied, 'more government funding, more generous philanthropy, and more pro bono hours from lawyers.' With these greater inputs, a lawyer would be available to every citizen needing to access the legal system. Almost as a reflex, I suspect a large number of my lawyer peers would have given the same answer."

"But what’s the likelihood of a 5x or 6x increase in resources? Cf. Legal Services Corporation, '2017 Justice Gap' at 6 (June 2017) (reporting that 86% of the civil legal problems reported by low-income Americans in the past year received inadequate or no legal help.). I’d put it at close to zero."

"Today, I am much more hopeful about our ability to substantially solve access to justice. But it’s likely going to involve a massive redesign of how many types of disputes get resolved, including the possibility of lawyers and courtrooms being engineered out the process. I say this based upon what I have learned about the Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT), Canada’s first online dispute resolution (ODR) system."

The article features comments made by Shannon Salter, the Chair of the CRT.

Salter was a keynote speaker at the recent annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) in Edmonton. Her May 29, 2019 presentation to CALL is available online.

Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2019 Confeence Presentations Now Online

Many of the presentations from the recent annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries are now available online.

The conference took place in Edmonton from May 26 to 29, 2019.

World Refugee Day Resources from Oxford Public International Law

Oxford Public International Law has compiled a list of resources for World Refugee Day, which is today. They are free until August 31, 2019:

"To mark the importance of this day we have made more than 30 book chapters, journal articles, and pieces of content from our online resources freely accessible to assist those working with refugees on the ground, as well as those who want to know more about the framework of rights and obligations concerning refugees."

"The materials are structured around four key questions: who is a refugee, what rights do they have, what are transit states’ obligations, and what are the duties of the state where a refugee applies for asylum."

May 2019 Update from the Canadian Federation of Library Associations

The Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) has provided an overview of activities since February 2019. I found it on the Librarianship.ca website.

There is information on:

• advocacy on telecommunications policy, disability issues, and access to information
• surveys in relation to Voilà, the new national union catalogue, and to challenged books
• updates from the CFLA's committees on cataloguing and metadata, copyright, indigenous matters, and intellectual freedom
• outreach activities

English Law Commission Report on Money Laundering

The Law Commission in England has released a report on anti-money laundering measures.

It is estimated that between 0.7 and 1.28% of annual European Union GDP is connected to suspect financial activity.

In 2017 the UK government asked the Law Commission to review limited aspects of the anti-money laundering regime in Part 7 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the counter-terrorism financing regime in Part 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The Commission was specifically asked to examine ideas for reform of the system of voluntary disclosures known as the 'consent regime'.

The final report makes 19 legislative and non-legislative recommendations to improve the consent regime, including:

• An advisory board with oversight for the regime, with a remit to oversee the drafting of guidance, to measure the effectiveness of the regime and advise the government on ways to improve it.
• Retaining the consent regime, subject to amendments to improve effectiveness.
• Statutory guidance on a number of key legislative concepts underpinning the reporting regime, to assist the regulated sector in complying with their legal obligations. This includes guidance on: suspicion, appropriate consent and arrangements with prior consent and what may amount to a reasonable excuse.
• Prescribing the form in which suspicious activity is reported, making use of technology to devise an online interactive form.
• An exemption to allow ringfencing of suspected criminal property by a credit of financial institution. This provides for a more proportionate response to the reporting of (suspected) criminal property.
• Extending the circumstances in which a reporter may have a reasonable excuse not to make a voluntary disclosure.
• Further research into the utility of thematic reporting or geographical targeting orders, which remove the reporter’s discretion to assess suspicion.

CALL 2019 Conference Wrap-Up

Megan Siu, who chaired to organizing committee for the 2019 annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries that took place in Edmonton in late May, has provided her take on what goes into such an event on her blog Megscellany.

Get a load of the obstacles the organizers successfully overcame:

• Several construction plans within downtown Edmonton were (and are) scheduled to continue until 2020 or 2021
• CALL/ACBD’s event management company changed around the 1 year mark
• A plenary speaker needed to be replaced in January (4-5 months before the conference)
• Alberta’s provincial election writ was dropped in February (3 months before the conference)
  • This meant that the election communications policy hindered the participation of about half of the conference planning committee
  • We had to remove certain local sponsor logos and government employee bios and session descriptions from the conference website and program until the election period ended
  • We couldn’t advertise anything to do with provincial government programs or employees on CALL-L, In Session, the CALL/ACBD website, or social media
• The Westin Edmonton (our conference venue booked 2 years in advance) flooded in March (2 months before the conference)
• 1 of our social tours double-booked themselves
• A number of flights coming in from BC were delayed within the first 2 days of the conference
• 2 of our lightning talk speakers experienced medical setbacks during the conference
• We were in the middle of Alberta’s fire season and there were 7 states of local emergency declared right before the conference started

 That is an amazing story.

 It was a great conference.

Thank you Megan.

Updated International Law Research Guides From GlobaLex

GlobaLex, the electronic collection created by the Hauser Global Law School Program at the New York University School of Law, recently updated some of its research guides.

These include:

• Cyberwarfare and Collateral Damages: "The purpose of this paper is to offer an introductory overview on the collateral damages and victims of cyberwarfare. Cyberwarfare is a new type of warfare that poses numerous challenges. The article illustrates some basic definitions of cyberwarfare and cyber weapons proposed so far, as well as the international legal framework. Furthermore, the article addresses collateral damages and the role of the victims including illustrations of two paradigmatic cases of widely known cyberattacks."
• Researching Indigenous Peoples International Law: "This article is designed to provide a foundation for researching indigenous international law by covering the definition of 'indigenous peoples', a brief history, key terms and issues, regional and international organizations including the United Nations, international documentation such as treaties, selected books and articles, online sources, and other secondary sources."

Supreme Court of Canada: New Library Titles

The list of new library titles added to the Supreme Court of Canada collection from June 1-15, 2019 is now available on the Court website.

It is possible to subscribe via e-mail to receive the list.

Canadian Association of Research Libraries Statement on Copyright Review

This is a follow-up to the June 9, 2019 post entitled How Did The Copyright Act Review Deal With Library Sector Recommendations.

Earlier this month,the House of Commons Standing Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology published its report on the Statutory Review of the Copyright Act.

On June 11, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) issued a statement on the report that applauds the Committee's work for its "reasoned analysis and balanced conclusions":

"The report includes 36 recommendations, many of which reflect the positions put forward by CARL and our member institutions in their briefs and appearances before Committee. Notable highlights for the research library community include: 

• Amending the fair dealing exception so that allowable purposes are illustrative rather than exhaustive (...);
• Applying open licences to Canadian Government works (...);
• Facilitating the use of a work or other subject matter for the purpose of informational analysis (i.e. text and data mining) (...)
• Opposing the extension of copyright as required as part of the USMCA but, in the event that it is ratified by all parties, recommending both a registration system and a reversion right to counteract some of the disadvantages of term extension (...);
• Engaging in comprehensive consultations with 'Indigenous groups, experts and others on the protection of traditional arts and cultural expressions in the context of Reconciliation' (...);
• Prioritizing means for ensuring that works are made available in accessible formats to benefit persons with a perceptual disability (...)"

 

Manitoba Law Reform Commission Report on Expropriation

The Manitoba Law Reform Commission has released its final report on the province's Expropriation Act:

"In addition to providing compensation for lands taken by an authority, The Expropriation Act also provides compensation to owners for “injurious affection”, which occurs when damages are sustained by an owner when only part of the land is taken, or even where no lands are taken but the owner nonetheless sustains damages to their land as a result of an expropriation. The Manitoba Law Reform Commission (“Commission”) has learned that provisions in The Expropriation Act that deal with injurious affection are inconsistent with other Canadian expropriation statutes and may hinder the ability of an owner to claim due compensation in certain circumstances. In the Commission’s view, the restrictive wording in the Act prevents landowners from making claims and should therefore be removed."

"In January 2018, the Commission released a Consultation Report entitled The Expropriation Act of Manitoba. The Commission received input from practitioners with expertise in the area of expropriation. Through the consultation process, several other matters relating to The Expropriation Act respecting disturbance compensation, consulting costs, and abandonment of expropriation, were brought to the Commission’s attention. These additional matters are addressed in this report. The Commission makes ten recommendations to improve The Expropriation Act. If implemented, these recommendations would provide better guidance to practitioners, landowners and the Land Value Appraisal Commission, and put the injurious affection provisions on par with other jurisdictions in Canada."

"This report is limited to reviewing the particular aspects of The Expropriation Act which have been identified by legal practitioners as problematic. It forms part of a series of reports entitled Creating Efficiencies in the Law, which seek to address discrete, straightforward issues that, in the Commission’s view, can be improved with relatively simple legislative amendments."

Podcast Interview with AALL President Femi Cadmus

In the latest episode of his LawNext podcast, veteran legal journalist Bob Ambrogi interviews Femi Cadmus, President of the American Association of Law Libraries :

" 'We are not your grandfather’s law librarian.' As president of the American Association of Law Libraries, Femi Cadmus makes that point emphatically. Her organization recently completed it first-ever AALL State of the Profession report, an in-depth look at what information professionals do and how they do it. The report’s bottom line is that technology is making the role of the law librarian more diverse and more essential than ever before."

How Did The Copyright Act Review Deal With Library Sector Recommendations

This is a follow-up to the June 4, 2019 post entitled House of Commons Report on Statutory Review of the Copyright Act.

Earlier this month,the House of Commons Standing Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology published its report on the Statutory Review of the Copyright Act.

The Librarianship website has compiled a comparison of GLAM Sector Recommendations vs Committee Recommendations. GLAM strands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums.

Law Commission of England Consultation on Surrogacy

The English Law Commission has published a consultation document on the law of surrogacy.

From the description of the project:

"Surrogacy is where a woman – the surrogate – bears a child on behalf of someone else or a couple, who intend to become the child’s parents.|

"As society changes, surrogacy is becoming more common – the number of children born this way could be 10 times higher than it was a decade ago."

"In the UK, surrogacy is governed by the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 and certain provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008."

"But there are significant problems with the law. Currently, intended parents have to wait until the child has been born and then apply to court to become the child’s parents. The process can take many months to complete and doesn’t reflect the reality of the child’s family life, and affects the intended parents’ ability to take decisions about the child in their care (...)"

"In the paper, we make provisional proposals to improve surrogacy laws so they better support the child, surrogates and intended parents. Key proposals include:

• Creating a new surrogacy pathway that will allow, in many cases, the intended parents to be the legal parents of the child from the moment of birth.
• Introducing specific regulation for surrogacy arrangements and safeguards such as counselling and independent legal advice. This should reduce risk of arrangements breaking down.
• Allowing international surrogacy arrangements to be recognised here, on a country-by-country basis."

Th consultation period ends in September 2019.

Fixing Fair Dealing for the Digital Age

This is a follow-up to yesterday's post entitled House of Commons Report on Statutory Review of the Copyright Act.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist today chimed in with a post on hos blog: Fixing Fair Dealing for the Digital Age: What Lies Behind the Copyright Review’s Most Important Recommendation.

Fair dealing is an exception allowed under the Copyright Act. It allows use of limited portions of a copyright protected work without permission or payment of copyright royalties for purposes such as  research, private study, education, satire, parody, criticism, review or news reporting.

Prof. Geist writes:

"The long-awaited Canadian copyright review report features numerous good recommendations, many of which were rejections of industry lobbying: a rejection of new restrictions on fair dealing for education, rejection of Bell’s FairPlay site blocking initiative, and rejection of limits on safe harbours in response to the so-called 'value gap.' Yet the most notable recommendation is the committee’s support for fair dealing for the digital age by expanding its scope and ensuring that it applies equally in the analog and digital worlds."

House of Commons Report on Statutory Review of the Copyright Act

The House of Commons Standing Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has published its report on the Statutory Review of the Copyright Act:

"Section 92 of the Copyright Act (the Act) provides that the Act must be reviewed every five years by a parliamentary committee. On 13 December 2017, the House of Commons designated its Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (the Committee) to conduct the review. The Committee held 52 meetings, heard 263 witnesses, collected 192 briefs, and received more than 6,000 emails and other correspondence."

"The Committee consulted a broad range of stakeholders to ensure all perspectives were duly considered. These stakeholders included, among others, creators, educational institutions, industry representatives, teachers, students, interest groups, broadcasters, online service providers, Internet service providers, collective societies, lawyers, and academics. The Committee also dedicated a portion of the review to Indigenous groups and individuals, which could become standard practice when formulating copyright policy. The Committee gathered evidence in a systematic manner that allowed witnesses to bring forth the issues that mattered to them. This report cites every single person who provided oral testimony or submitted a brief to the Committee, and thus recognizes that the complexity of copyright policy requires every issue to be carefully weighed."

"The fruit of over ten meetings of deliberations, this Committee’s report covers a broad range of topics. They include the protection of traditional and cultural expressions, term extension, computer-generated works, artist’s resale rights, fair dealing, safe harbour provisions, perceptual disability provisions, online piracy, proceedings before the Copyright Board of Canada, and the statutory review process itself. After reporting on a few legal developments of the last seven years, the report addresses these topics in turn under six sections: Statutory Review, Indigenous Matters, Rights, Exceptions, Enforcement, and the Collective Administration of Rights."

"The report makes 36 recommendations. They include recommendations aiming at reducing the opaqueness of Canadian copyright law, notably by gathering authoritative information on its impact on Canadian creators and creative industries, increasing the transparency of the collective administration of rights, and simplifying the Act. The Committee recommends improving the bargaining power of Canadian creators by granting them a termination right while mitigating the impact of such a right on the commercial exploitation of copyright. It also proposes to sensibly update enforcement mechanisms, starting with statutory damages for rights-holders and collective societies. The recommendations address site-blocking proposals and their potential impact on the form and function of Internet, and assert that online service providers such as Google and Facebook must fully comply with the Act to the benefit of both rights-holders and users. The report also proposes to move forward to protect traditional and cultural expressions, vitally informed by the testimony of Indigenous witnesses."

Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

Earlier today, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report at a public ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec.

One of the supplementary reports explains the legal reasoning behind the Inquiry's declaration that the disproportionate levels of violence suffered by Indigenous women and girls in Canada can be considered a form of "race-based genocide (...)  empowered by colonial structures, evidenced notably by the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, residential schools and breaches of human and Indigenous rights, leading directly to the current increased rates of violence, death, and suicide in Indigenous populations".

Among its findings, the report stated that Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be murdered or to go missing than members of any other demographic group in Canada.

After more than 3 years of meetings and gathering testimony, the Inquiry made 231 calls for action to government, institutions and the larger Canadian public to help address endemic levels of violence directed at Indigenous women and girls and what the report calls 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) people.

The website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has condensed the calls for action for easier understanding.

June 2019 Issue of In Session - E-Newsletter of Canadian Association of Law Libraries

The June 2019 issue of In Session is available online.

It is the monthly e-newsletter of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) and contains news from CALL committees and special interest groups, member updates and events.

There is news about:

• recent awards honouring prominent CALL members
• the new Executive Board of the association
• the Professional Development Committee which handles continuing education programs for members
• the Membership Development Committee's mentoring program

Supreme Court of Canada: New Library Titles

The list of new library titles added to the Supreme Court of Canada collection from May 16-31, 2019 is now available on the Court website.

It is possible to subscribe via e-mail to receive the list.