Last Friday, the SCC released a decision that may prove to be the big catch the Canadian fishing industry was waiting for. In Saulnier v. Royal Bank of Canada, 2008 SCC 58, fishing licenses were held to be ‘property’ for the purposes of the federal Banking and Insolvency Act (“BIA”) and Nova Scotia’s Personal Property [...]

Handed down on June 27, 2008, R. v. Kapp, 2008 SCC 41, involves the interplay between sections 15 and 25 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically in the context of Aboriginal fishing rights.  This brief commentary asserts that Kapp goes further than simply upholding Aboriginal fishing rights.  In fact, the ruling provides [...]

The Kapp (2008 SCC 41) ruling offers the most important addition to s.15 jurisprudence since the Law ([1999] 1 S.C.R. 497) decision of 1999. After a number of years of silently enduring an academic onslaught, the Court has engaged with the barrage of scholarly criticism directed at the Law test (see footnotes 1 and 2) [...]

On January 23, 2008, the SCC heard the case Royal Bank of Canada v. Saulnier, on appeal from the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal. This bankruptcy law case (which has been discussed by Brad Caldwell at TheCourt.ca on January 23, 2008 in a post entitled, “Fishing Licenses as Security for Loans – An Incremental Step [...]

Editor’s note: Today, the SCC hears its appeal in Royal Bank of Canada v. Saulnier (31622). Reproduced below, with permission, is an article that first appeared in the April 2006 edition of Mariner Life which discusses the trial level decision of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court when it was released. While the case has been [...]