Two Quebec law faculties have been rated as two of the best 100 in the world to study law by the Times Higher Education (THE) World University rankings.
McGill University’s law faculty, headed by Robert Leckey, was ranked 17th worldwide, maintaining its hold in the global top 20 since THE began publishing rankings specific to law in 2017.
The Université de Montréal’s law faculty was ranked 51st, climbing an impressive 42 spots.
A lower court ruling that struck down a provincial ban on homegrown cannabis was overturned by the Quebec Court of Appeal after it held that the province was acting within its jurisdiction over property and civil rights when it decided to regulate the market by creating a state monopoly to minimize the “harmful” effects of cannabis on health.
Thanks to the Quebec Appeal Court ruling, Quebec along with Manitoba are the only provinces that still have in place a strict regulatory approach that bans residents from growing recreational cannabis at home in spite of the federal law, Cannabis Act, allowing individuals to grow up to four plants.
The contract is king, especially when it involves sophisticated commercial parties who freely negotiated a non-consumer contract, ruled the Supreme Court of Canada in a case dealing with non-liability clauses.
In a case centred around a contract dispute between two firms, the nation’s highest court overturned a Quebec Court of Appeal decision and held that “the will of the parties had to be respected.”
Victims of conjugal and sexual violence will have access to emergency financial assistance, the latest initiative the Quebec government introduced to help victims of gender-based violence.
Over the past few months, the Quebec government has tabled a controversial bill to create a specialized tribunal for sexual and domestic violence, handed funding to a Montreal legal aid clinic to provide training for legal professionals, and boosted social and legal services to help victims of intimate partner and sexual violence.
A new divisional court dealing with conjugal and sexual complaints is expected to be launched by the beginning of 2022 by the Court of Quebec, potentially setting the stage for a legal battle against the Quebec government over judicial independence and the administration of justice.
The Quebec government tabled in mid-September a bill that will create a “specialized” tribunal that is expected to take a different approach to dealing with victims of domestic and sexual violence by moving away from the traditional criminal justice framework and have judicial institutions work in collaboration with specially trained jurists and specialized police units in tandem with social and community services to cultivate a victim-centred approach.
An unusually public clash between the Quebec Justice Minister and the Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec has materialized over competing visions on how to deal with conjugal and sexual violence cases, with little signs of abating.
The simmering skirmish between the executive and the judiciary erupted in the open shortly after Chief Justice Lucie Rondeau announced on Sept 28th the creation of a new division within the Court of Quebec to deal with conjugal and sexual violence offences, two weeks after the Quebec government tabled a bill that would move away from the traditional criminal justice framework to deal with gender-based violence and create a “specialized” court to deal with these offences.
The Quebec government, concerned over the possibility that a growing number of head offices were contemplating leaving the province over rising costs of insurance premiums for big business, is relaxing a legislative provision that compels insurers to assume defence costs of insureds over and above the limits of insurance policies.
The legislative amendment, welcomed by big business, will allow defence costs to be excluded from coverage or included in the limits of insurance only for certain ”categories of insurance contracts” and “classes of insureds.” This change may bring some insurance relief to public companies and large businesses who are struggling with rising premiums to obtain liability insurance, in particular coverage for directors and officers (D&O), in Quebec, according to insurance legal experts.
A divided Quebec Court of Appeal may have opened the door towards a positive obligation to carry a mobile phone when doing physical outdoor activities as a precaution against foreseeable risk or face the possibility of being held to account for a contributory fault, according to experts.
In a ruling that examines the principles of contractual civil liability, a dissenting Quebec Court of Appeal judge held that a mountain biker who sustained injuries after he fell from a chairlift had committed a contributory fault by failing to have a cell phone when he embarked on the lift.
“While it is a dissenting opinion, it will open the door to hold that it is a fault not to have a mobile phone,” remarked Patrice Deslauriers, a law professor at the Université de Montréal who teaches civil liability. “That goes too far. Will I now be obliged to check the status of the battery of the cell phone? We are not yet at a stage in society where we are obliged to carry with us a cell phone.”
A man who subjected his ex-wife to nine years of domestic violence was ordered by Quebec Superior Court to pay her nearly $47,000 in damages, the second time in less than a month that a Quebec court ordered an abusive spouse to pay damages for the violence they inflicted.
In a decision welcomed by family law experts and advocates against family violence who believe it is the harbinger of an emerging trend, Quebec Superior Court Justice Gregory Moore held that recent amendments to the federal Divorce Act (Act) “underline the sensibility that the the courts and parties must demonstrate faced with this challenge” to society. Justice Moore awarded more than $1,900 in damages, $30,000 in non-pecuniary damages and $15,000 in punitive damages.
“This is a developing trend because society in general rejects family violence, because there is heightened awareness by the courts over the issue of family violence, and because domestic violence is no longer viewed by the courts as being only a ground for granting divorce but as a possible cause of physical and psychological harm that must be compensated,” said Michel Tétrault, a family law expert who has written “Droit de la famille.”
A Quebec legislative provision that compelled Internet service providers to block unauthorized gaming websites has been found unconstitutional by the Quebec Court of Appeal as it infringes on areas of exclusive federal jurisdiction.
Following in the footsteps of several European nations, including Cyprus, Denmark and Romania, the Quebec government amended the Consumer Protection Act (Act) in 2016 via an omnibus budget bill to introduce a provision that obliged Internet service providers (ISPs) to implement blocking measures to prohibit Quebec residents from accessing unauthorized gambling websites. The blacklist would be drawn up by Loto-Québec, the government agency that operates and develops lotteries in the province. Internet service providers that failed to comply faced steep fines — up to $100,000 and twice that amount for subsequent offences.
“From a commercial perspective it has had mixed results,” remarked gaming lawyer Michael Lipton of Dickinson Wright LLP. “Some jurisdictions have tried it; others have backed away from it.”
Odds are that the federal government is going to legalize single-event sports wagering. The Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act (Bill C-218) was unanimously passed by the House of Commons, and is currently before the Senate.
Similar private member’s bills have previously made it this far, but this time it’s different. The bill has all-party support, and has the backing of the sports industry and police, both of which opposed legislation in the Senate in 2015. A 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a federal law prohibiting single-event sports betting outside of Nevada, giving each state the power to decide whether to allow it within their borders, has changed the North American gaming landscape, adding pressure on Ottawa to follow suit as 30 states and counting have either launched legal sports betting or passed legislation. “The U.S. Supreme Court decision was probably a trigger point because once it becomes regulated in the U.S. then you ask what is fundamentally different about that form of entertainment in Canada from the U.S,” notes Don Bourgeois, former General Counsel for the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) and now counsel with Fogler, Rubinoff LLP.
Quebec’s controversial secularism law that bans religious symbols from being worn by government employees was largely upheld by Quebec Superior Court thanks to the provincial government’s use of the notwithstanding clause even though it disproportionately harms women, and particularly Muslim women.
An internationally renowned whiteriver in Quebec was granted legal personhood, a first in Canada, in an effort to protect its ecosystems from future development following the adoption of two parallel resolutions by a local indigenous community and municipality, setting the stage for a similar effort for the St. Lawrence River.
The initiative, part of a growing global movement that has taken root particularly in Ecuador and New Zealand, may beckon a paradigm shift in environmental law, may bolster the integration of Indigenous law into the Canadian legal system, and has the potential of transforming the legal concept of property, according to legal experts.