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This chapter provides an overview of equality rights under s. 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including notes and questions to guide reflection on trends and tensions in the jurisprudence. First, the chapter excerpts the text of s. 15 and notes that s. 28 is an additional—though underutilized—equality provision in the Charter. Second, the chapter considers key concepts underlying s. 15, including equality, discrimination, and the justification of infringement under s. 1, with reference to the Court's first s. 15 decision in Andrews. Third, the chapter explores adverse effects discrimination, with excerpts from distinct settings of social hierarchy analyzed by the Court, "e.g., disability (Eldridge), sexuality (Vriend), gender (Fraser), and race/Indigeneity (Sharma)." Fourth, the chapter discusses analogous grounds of discrimination and the Court's leading decision on such grounds (Corbiere). Lastly, the chapter outlines affirmative action under s. 15(2) of the Charter, with reference to the Court's leading decision in Kapp.

Annette Demers, Yemisi Dina, Gian Medves, 2025 CanLIIDocs 1745

Authored By: Pascale Chapdelaine (Ph.D, LLB)Dr. Pascale Chapdelaine is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor. Thank you to the organizers and participants at the Festschrift Workshop held on December 15, 2023 at the Faculty of Law of the K.U. Leuven in honour of Dr. Geertrui Van Overwalle coinciding with her celebration as emeritus professor. In particular thank you to Esther Van Zimmeren, Amandine Léonard and Arina Gorbatyuk for inviting me to contribute to this Li

The Supreme Court of Canada is set to decide whether methods of medical treatment constitute patentable subject matter. The concerns surrounding extension of patent protection to methods of medical treatment, argued almost entirely on the grounds of patentable subject matter, assumes that a physician carrying out such treatment is patent infringer. Canadian jurisprudence has largely taken this assumption to be true. Interrogating the historical jurisprudence supporting the prohibition on patentability of methods of medical treatment, this article demonstrates that this jurisprudence is far from clear as to whether the issue is, or should be, approached as a question of patentability or infringement. An analysis of the case law on both patentability of methods of medical treatment, and what constitutes infringing ‘use’ of an invention, demonstrates that both lines of jurisprudence share similar concepts and underlying concerns. This has generated uncertainty as to whether the issue of extending patent protection to methods of medical treatment has ever clearly been a question of patentability. Rather, examining both lines of jurisprudence side-by-side, this piece demonstrates that concerns underlying extension of patent protection to cover methods of medical treatment have historically been categorized as scope of protection concerns, rather than patentability concerns. As such, the debate surrounding patent protection and methods of medical treatment is best characterized as an infringement issue.

Authored By: Professor Wissam Aoun, Associate Professor & Member of Windsor Law  LTEC Lab and Caitlyn Massad, JD Candidate at Windsor Law1. INTRODUCTION Pharmascience Inc. v. Janssen Inc.[1] is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) this coming October. In Pharmascience, the SCC will revisit the decades old prohibition against patenting of methods of medical treatment. The case revolves around a fact pattern common to several recent ‘skinny label’ cases. What one sees in ‘skin

In the era of rapid information exchange, engineers and computer scientists are not merely creators of technology but vital players in the shaping of public discourse, including in the context of serious health threats like the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the dis/misinformation surrounding public health risks, this work will dissect the mechanisms that enable disinformation and explore how design decisions, algorithmic biases, and lack of regulation contribute to the spread of false information. Design decisions that include simplified sharing mechanisms, limited word counts, and basing the platforms in the sharing of emotional stories drive confirmation biases and discourage fact-checking. Users are further trapped by their past behaviors in algorithm-based echo chambers that repeat false information. These effects are solidified by failed regulation attempts and backfire effects, as well as barriers to regulation from organizations. Thus, the built infrastructure and embedded algorithms of these digital platforms create breeding grounds for disinformation. By indirectly governing social listening, engineers and computer scientists can actively influence the distribution and credibility of information, thus impacting public trust and health decisions. This work will further analyze the professional, ethical, and human rights responsibilities of the engineering profession as architects of social media and other digital platforms. In Ontario, Canada, the engineering profession’s specific responsibilities include statutory duties to serve the public interest, ethical obligations that are both statutory and normative, and compliance with laws related to privacy, human rights, and communication. This work contends that as a player in infodemics, engineering ethics education must shift away from a rules-based approach to instead prioritize social responsibility and foster engagement with societal and political dimensions of technology and its consequences.

This paper examines historical and contemporary trends in Canadian international student policy through the lens of racial capitalism, arguing that current policy facilitates a significant neocolonial wealth transfer from Global South families to Canada through processes of expropriation, exploitation, and expulsion. It argues that discriminatory tuition fees effectively function as “education head taxes”, which extract billions of dollars annually from international students. Meanwhile, “gauntlets” to permanent residency have emerged in an immigration landscape where working class migrants have narrower options to regularize, creating a system of labour exploitation where student-labourers face precarious conditions and structural indebtedness. Finally, the constant threat of expulsion through loss of status and deportation is used to discipline labour and enforce nationalist segregation of labour and education markets. Within all three of these processes, race-making and neocolonial relations play a central role in justifying differential treatment, curtailing solidarity, and limiting potential policy changes to curtail abuses.

Supervision has been described as the "beating heart" and the "core" of clinical legal education. Yet lawyers who supervise law students in clinical programs have challenging and poorly understood roles within Canadian legal education. This article analyzes interviews with lawyers who supervise students in Canadian law-school affiliated legal clinics. Supervising lawyers describe the tensions between their roles as lawyers, supervisors and mentors, university and/or non-profit employees, social justice advocates, members of law societies, and clinic team members. These tensions often exist within an environment of lower pay, poor job security, substandard treatment by colleagues, inadequate training, and other aspects that paint a bleak picture. Despite these challenges, supervising lawyers describe intense satisfaction and inspiration derived from their work with students, clients, and the community. This article sheds light on the pedagogies employed by clinicians, their conditions of employment, and their roles in legal education more broadly. We conclude the article with our reflections about how law schools, clinics, and the legal profession can respond to the need to better support the vital work of supervision in clinical legal education.

Toronto’s new bubble zone anti-protest bylaw is both more and less dangerous than it may appear at first glance. Less because the bylaw’s enforceability and constitutionality are shaky, more because this provision needs to be understood as an example of the lawfare being wielded against pro-Palestinian solidarity and other left movements.

Supporters of the recently enacted bubble zone by-law in Toronto argue that the law is necessary to protect individuals, who are entering and leaving places such as synagogues and religious schools, from harassment and intimidation by protestors. While very little was said in these debates about the protection of “captive audiences” from speech they find objectionable, this concern is, I think, implicit in the claim that the speech of protestors, and more particularly pro-Palestinian protestors, is harmful.

The goal of this article is to better understand the potential of tribunals to improve access to justice in Canada. It begins by defining “tribunals” and “access to justice”, the key concepts of this article. Because tribunals and trial courts are functional alternatives for the resolution of many legal disputes, the article first reviews the merits of trial-level courts in this regard. It then turns to tribunals, reviewing some objective evidence of tribunal excellence in creating access to justice. Four key attributes of tribunals make them advantageous alternatives to trial-level courts for the accessible and just resolution of many types of legal dispute. First, tribunals are specialized instead of having general jurisdiction. Second, tribunals apply teamwork to dispute-resolution, instead of assigning all responsibility to individual adjudicators. Third, healthy forms of accountability are easier to establish in tribunals than they are in courts. This includes accountability of individual members to the tribunal and accountability of the tribunal to the legislature that created it. Finally, tribunals can be designed for maximal performance in creating access to justice, by contrast to courts which, for good reasons, resist design or reform efforts coming from outside themselves. The final Part of the article argues that tribunals can advance access to justice not only by taking on dispute-resolution work that courts would otherwise do, but also by offering authoritative legal vindication of rights that would otherwise be abandoned, or resolved in a completely privatized way. The tribunal promise of accessible adjudication can also be expected to improve the quality of settlements, in terms of upholding parties’ substantive legal rights.

The Civil Rules Review (CRR) has proposed a thorough rewrite of Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure. The goal is to make civil litigation speedier, more affordable, and less complex. The CRR's April 2025 Consultation Paper makes dozens of reform proposals, affecting every major phase of the litigation process.   This short paper argues that the leaders of Ontario's civil justice system should take the time to look before they leap. To implement changes by the end of 2025, as proposed by the original Terms of Reference for the Civil Rules Review, would be dangerously and unnecessarily premature. The consultation phase (currently just 10 weeks) should be extended, and a methodologically rigorous empirical evaluation should be conducted. This evaluation should be informed by a solid theoretical understanding of civil litigation’s benefits and costs; the middle section of this paper briefly sketches such a theory.

On the anniversary of the Nakba, Asians in Canada must reaffirm solidarity with Palestinian brethren

In a moment when restorative justice stands poised to mainstream in U.S. and Canadian legal education, this essay recalls some intellectual history of ADR as

<p><span>Research in clinical law, critical legal studies, and therapeutic jurisprudence has spotlighted serious challenges that clients face whe

In a new push for ‘lawfare’, pro-Israel groups are weaponizing the courts to silence criticism of Israel