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Beverley McLachlin is the architect of a flexible, socially conscious and principled approach to evidence admissibility in Canada. Her jurisprudence has infused the law of evidence with tools that enable it to adapt to new situations, to be aware of and reflect concerns for systemic issues all with an eye to ensuring it can fulfill its regulatory purpose of facilitating justice. I call this the McLachlin principle. This chapter explores the foundations of that approach in two early McLachlin decisions: R v Khan; R v Seaboyer; and then, as Chief Justice, in Mitchell v MNR where she set out, for the first time in a Supreme Court decision, a theory of evidence admissibility. After examining this evidence trilogy, the chapter will consider the application of the McLachlin principle in the context of defence applications to limit cross-examination of an accused on their prior criminal record under R v Corbett. Section 12(1) of the Canada Evidence Act permits all witnesses, including an accused, to be cross-examined on their criminal record and our common law has, for the most part uncritically, accepted that a criminal record is relevant to a witness’s credibility and whether they are prepared to abide by their oath or affirmation. In Corbett, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the constitutionality of section 12(1) by reading into the provision a judicial discretion to prohibit or limit cross-examination on a prior record. Corbett was decided in 1988 and since then we have become more aware of the existence and manifestations of systemic racism, particularly as it relates to Indigenous and Black communities and the criminal justice system. Chief Justice McLachlin recognized this social reality in both Sauvé v Canada (Chief Electoral Officer) and R v Williams. Despite this consciousness, little, if any, attention has been given in our trial and appellate courts to how social conditions and bias are relevant in thinking about admissibility under Corbett. Enter the McLachlin principle.The chapter examines how it can be used to impact Corbett applications and stimulate future consideration of how evidence law can adapt to better facilitate justice in cases involving Indigenous and racialized participants.

The Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (the ‘Malabo Protocol’) does not include a provision defining which defences will be applicable before the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (‘the African Court’). This chapter has the task of examining the existing body of international criminal law to see what guidance the African Court may take with respect to which defences have been recognized and which have been explicitly rejected, how recognized defences have been defined, and what questions have arisen or may arise with respect to these defences.

The statutes that govern the legal profession across the country reserve the practice of law for lawyers, giving rise to lawyers’ claim to a monopoly over legal services. However, those same statutes, and many others, also allow non-lawyers to engage in practice-of-law activities. Non-lawyers provide legal assistance, advice, and representation across Canada in a range of settings. The privilege of self-regulation imposes on law societies a duty to govern in the public interest. The public interest is often cited to support lawyers’ monopoly, which is a useless fiction. Arguments by lawyers to restrict or limit non-lawyers’ provision of legal services are essentially quality arguments. This article asserts that lawyers’ claims for a monopoly are inconsistent with both the extent and quality of non-lawyer legal service provision in Canada.

This past August, I participated in the Blanket Exercise organized by the Faculty of Law University of Windsor with our incoming law students. The narrative exercise, designed by KAIROS (though sli…

In a brief submitted to the standing committee on industry, science and technology, 11 Canadian intellectual property scholars urged Parliament to maintain a balanced, distinctly Canadian copyright system that guards against external...

Québec is pushing to ban public servants from wearing religious garb even as the crucifix hangs in its legislature. It’s ironic and hypocritical for a province that prides itself on secularism.

There is much to learn from the trial of Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley on the dangers of not directly confronting the potential impact of racial bias on the trial process. Stanley was acquitted in February 2018 by an all-White jury in the shooting death of 22-year-old Cree man Colten Boushie. The law gives us tools to safeguard trials from racial bias that we shouldn’t ignore. One of these tools is the law of evidence.The law of evidence is a set of rules aimed at regulating the admissibility and use of evidence, in order to fairly promote the search for truth. It recognizes that judges and jurors bring to court every day assumptions about human experience and behaviour that are grounded in unreliable, stereotypical or discriminatory assumptions. That is precisely why it gives judges a discretion to exclude evidence where its prejudicial effect outweighs its relevance or probative value. And why we have rules, for example, that make prior sexual history evidence in sexual assault cases or evidence that paints an accused in a negative light (bad character evidence) presumptively inadmissible.Unfortunately, despite the fact that Indigenous, Black and Brown lived experiences are disproportionately before courts consisting of largely White jurors or judges, we have failed to ensure that our rules of evidence protect against racial bias in the same way that they do against other types of unreliable and discriminatory generalizations. The Stanley trial is a stark reminder of this reality.This short piece examines the Stanley trial and how the law of evidence can incorporate systemic racism as a lens to address issues of admissibility.

Since the publication of the first edition in 1970, Labour and Employment Law: Cases, Materials, and Commentary has become the standard resource for labour and employment law courses across Canada. Prepared by a national group of academics -- the Labour Law Casebook Group -- the book has continued to evolve with each new edition, reflecting the considerable changes that have occurred in Canadian workplaces and the laws governing them. A great many changes throughout the book respond to the numerous developments in labour and employment law since 2011. The most high-profile of these has been the set of Charter decisions that extend the protection of freedom of association to include the right to choose an independent bargaining agent and the right to strike, and which rely significantly on international labour standards in doing so. Additionally, this new edition responds to the growing importance of international and transnational law with a completely revised chapter; focuses on the gig economy and the proliferation of contracting networks that have fissured workplace relations; provides examples of caselaw and policy discussions grappling with the reach of legal responsibility to workers in these new relationships; and deepens the treatment of the rights of dependent contractors at common law and under labour and employment legislation. New cases and other source material have been added, and material that appeared in previous editions has been updated. The result is a comprehensive and thoroughly contemporary volume that benefits from over forty-five years of use in law schools across the country, while at the same time taking advantage of cutting-edge scholarship in assessing issues of contemporary concern.