In Williams v Toronto, the Ontario Court of Appeal explores the relationship between the City and a tenant, Mr. Williams, over loss of rent paid by tenants owed reduced rent under a statutory rent-reduction scheme. This case determined that there could be sufficient relationship between the tenants and the City to ground a cause of [...]

Recently issuing judgment in R. v. Craig, 2009 SCC 23 and companion cases R. v. Ouellette, 2009 SCC 24 and R. v. Nguyen, 2009 SCC 25, the Supreme Court of Canada has circumscribed the applicability of the forfeiture provisions for real property related to a designated substance offence under sections 16(1) and 19.1(3) of the [...]

Haida Nation v. British Columbia (Minister of Forests), 2004 SCC 73 established the Crown’s duty to consult and accommodate First Nations peoples during the pre-proof period where an aboriginal or treaty right is being pursued. Haida is an acknowledgement that it can take a long time to prove an aboriginal right. In the interim Chief [...]

Dennis Jacob and two other members of the Aroland First Nation were driving along a road used by Kimberly Clark for its forestry operations. It was nighttime when they shot at what they thought was a moose. It turned out to be a decoy and provincial officers charged them for night hunting and for discharging [...]

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a decisive ruling that clarifies once and for all that the interest paid on a mortgage taken out to purchase a principal residence cannot be tax deductible under any circumstances (unless part of the house is used for business purposes.) The ruling in the case of [...]

On November 13, 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada heard Judy Ann Craig’s appeal of a judgment rendered against her by the B.C. Court of Appeal. Ms. Craig’s appeal was heard alongside Sa Majeste la Reine c. Yves Ouellette and Kien Tam Nguyen et al. v. Her Majesty the Queen, but this post will only [...]

The Supreme Court’s decision last March in Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9 was widely recognized as a watershed event in Supreme Court jurisprudence. Indeed, even for those not steeped in administrative law, Dunsmuir appreciably changed the optics of judicial review; the court not only eschewed the much maligned ‘patent unreasonableness’ standard of review, [...]