Dalhousie University
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The Deterrence Dilemma: Is it Time for Canada to Abandon General Deterrence as a Sentencing Objective?
Full text linkWhen Canada first codified its sentencing framework in the Criminal Code, Parliament included deterrence as a sentencing objective. The sentencing objective of deterrence encompasses two aspects: specific deterrence for the individual offender and general deterrence for other potential offenders. I engage with the concept of general deterrence and its incorporation into Canadian sentencing law throughout this article. I argue that Parliament should abandon general deterrence as a sentencing objective under the Criminal Code. After reviewing the jurisprudence on general deterrence and conducting a systematic review of its current application in Ontario sentencing decisions, I argue that general deterrence should be abandoned as a sentencing objective for two reasons. First, overwhelming empirical research demonstrates that general deterrence is ineffective at reducing crime. Second, the application of general deterrence as a sentencing objective could exacerbate systemic race-based discrimination in sentencing.
Lorsque le Canada a codifié pour la première fois son cadre de détermination de la peine dans le Code criminel, le Parlement a inclus la dissuasion comme objectif. L’objectif de dissuasion en matière de détermination de la peine comprend deux aspects : la dissuasion spécifique pour la personne délinquante et la dissuasion générale pour les autres délinquants potentiels. Dans cet article, j’aborde le concept de dissuasion générale et son intégration dans le droit canadien en matière de détermination de la peine. Je soutiens que le Parlement devrait abandonner la dissuasion générale comme objectif de détermination de la peine dans le Code criminel. Après avoir examiné la jurisprudence en matière de dissuasion générale et procédé à un examen systématique de son application actuelle dans les décisions de l’Ontario touchant la détermination de la peine, j’affirme que la dissuasion générale devrait être abandonnée comme objectif pour deux raisons. Premièrement, d’abondantes recherches empiriques démontrent que la dissuasion générale est inefficace pour réduire la criminalité. Deuxièmement, l’application de la dissuasion générale comme objectif de détermination de la peine pourrait exacerber la discrimination systémique fondée sur la race dans la détermination de la peine
Legal Responses to Work-Related Intimate Partner Violence in Canada: Troubling Privatization
Full text linkIntimate partner violence and coercive control can manifest in abusers’ attempts to sabotage their partners’ participation in employment. Work-related intimate partner violence (WRIPV) also implicates employers, governments, and society more broadly, challenging the individualizing frame often applied to IPV. However, the legal recognition of WRIPV has been slow and sporadic, disproportionately impacting women experiencing intersecting inequalities, who are more vulnerable to IPV and to work-related inequalities. This article examines how governments have responded to WRIPV, situating their responses in the continuing legacy of the public/private distinction. Using a rights-based framework, I evaluate the two newest Canadian reforms concerning WRIPV: occupational health and safety and employment leave legislation. Both reforms specifically attend to WRIPV, at least in some jurisdictions, and provide preventive potential and remedial support for the economic and other consequences of IPV. Yet they also have shortcomings, including lack of coverage of some forms of IPV and some workplaces, loss of pay, and verification requirements that draw on gendered myths and stereotypes. I conclude by identifying further government action needed to better address WRIPV.
La violence conjugale et le contrôle coercitif peuvent se manifester par les tentatives des agresseurs de saboter la participation de leur partenaire au marché du travail. La violence conjugale liée au travail concerne également les employeurs, les gouvernements et la société en général, remettant en question le cadre individualisant souvent appliqué à la violence conjugale. Cependant, la reconnaissance juridique de la violence conjugale liée au travail se fait lentement et de manière sporadique, touchant de manière disproportionnée les femmes victimes d’inégalités croisées, qui sont plus vulnérables à la violence conjugale et aux inégalités en milieu de travail. Cet article examine la manière dont les gouvernements ont réagi à la violence conjugale liée au travail, en situant leurs réponses dans la continuité de la distinction entre le public et le privé. En m’appuyant sur un cadre axé sur les droits, j’évalue les deux dernières réformes canadiennes en matière de violence conjugale liée au travail : la législation sur la santé et la sécurité au travail et la législation sur les congés de travail. Ces deux réformes traitent spécifiquement de la violence conjugale liée au travail, du moins dans certaines provinces, et offrent un potentiel de prévention et un soutien visant à remédier aux conséquences économiques et autres de la violence conjugale. Elles comportent toutefois des lacunes, notamment l’absence de couverture de certaines formes de violence conjugale et de certains lieux de travail, la perte de salaire et les exigences de vérification qui reposent sur des mythes et des stéréotypes sexistes. Je conclus en indiquant les mesures supplémentaires que les gouvernements devraient prendre pour mieux lutter contre la violence conjugale liée au travail
Racial Capitalism, Neocolonial Wealth Transfer, and Canadian International Student Policy
Full text linkThis 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.
Cet article examine les tendances historiques et contemporaines de la politique canadienne à l’égard des étudiants étrangers sous l’angle du capitalisme racial, en soutenant que la politique actuelle facilite un important transfert de richesse néocoloniale des familles du Sud vers le Canada par le biais de processus d’expropriation, d’exploitation et d’expulsion. Il affirme que les frais de scolarité discriminatoires fonctionnent effectivement comme des « taxes d’entrée sur l’éducation », qui soutirent des milliards de dollars par an aux étudiants internationaux. Dans le même temps, les « défis » que pose l’accès à la résidence permanente sont apparus dans un paysage de l’immigration où les migrants de la classe ouvrière ont des options de régularisation plus restreintes, créant un système d’exploitation du travail où les étudiants-travailleurs sont confrontés à des conditions précaires et à un endettement structurel. Enfin, la menace constante d’expulsion par la perte du statut et la déportation est utilisée pour discipliner le travail et renforcer la ségrégation nationaliste des marchés du travail et de l’éducation. Dans ces trois processus, les relations raciales et néocoloniales jouent un rôle central en justifiant les différences de traitement, en réduisant la solidarité et en limitant les changements politiques potentiels pour mettre fin aux abus
Locked Out: An Empirical Study of the Impacts of Technological Protection Measures on Digital Content Access in Canadian Academic Libraries
Full text linkThis report presents findings from a comprehensive empirical qualitative study involving interviews with Canadian academic librarians, copyright officers, and information professionals to examine how TPMs affect digital content access. The research reveals that TPMs are deeply embedded within the technology and licensing frameworks used by libraries, creating opaque barriers to lawful access. Practitioners often lack clarity on whether restrictions stem from TPMs or from contractual or platform design, complicating their ability to support fair dealing uses of works, preservation, and teaching. This ambiguity has increased substantially with the rise of controlled digital lending (CDL) and other access models that have accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic. The study documents how this ambiguity leads to caution, workarounds, and self-censorship, even when legal rights exist. These findings highlight significant challenges in reforming content TPM policy within Canadian copyright law and underscore the need for legislative and regulatory clarity to support equitable access to scholarly and cultural materials.
Final report added 07/10/2025
The Use of AI in Canadian Courts
Full text linkLike many other fields, there has been growing discussion about the potential benefits of AI for the law. In light of the Federal Court’s interim principles and guidelines on the use of AI, this paper considers whether AI applications can assist the judiciary with its decision-making function. In doing so, it starts by considering the role that judges play in our legal system, finding that they are often called upon to consider and weigh information with human, emotional qualities and to assess the broader policy implications of their legal rulings. This paper concludes that the optimism of proponents of AI in the courtroom may be misplaced. The mathematical, mechanistic decision-making of AI applications does not replicate the kind of decisions judges are called upon to make. Moreover, it may be dangerous. Humans tend to defer to recommendations produced by algorithms, and AI applications are so complex that perhaps no one person—and certainly no one in the legal field—has the expertise necessary to understand how and why an AI application has reached a particular recommendation. Instead, the solution to lessening the burden on our legal system may be the more obvious, but less trendy question, of funding. More judges and more court staff may go much farther
A Framework for Interpreting Emojis in Legal Contexts
Full text linkIn the 2023 case of South West Terminal Ltd. v. Achter Land & Cattle Ltd., a Saskatchewan court found that a thumbs-up emoji, as a standalone item of communication, constituted the acceptance of a contract between a buyer and seller. The trial judge noted that such communication was “the new reality in Canadian society” for which courts should be prepared to interpret novel units of language arising in the digital age. However, an analysis of recent Canadian cases involving emojis shows that courts have not been prepared, with inconsistencies in how emojis are represented in evidence, how they are analysed, how much interpretive weight they are given, or whether they are dismissed as decorative and without linguistic value. This paper argues that while emojis are not a standardized form of communication, they hold linguistic value which makes them critical to the interpretation of evidence. Part I reviews how the field of linguistics has studied emojis. Part II explains how a corpus of English-language Canadian case law was built and analysed to map patterns and inconsistencies in Canadian courts’ emoji interpretation. It also argues that the South West analysis of the emoji in question provides a skeleton for an interpretive framework for emoji. Part III outlines how such a framework could be realized, drawing from both linguistics and jurisprudence. The paper concludes with a caution against courts’ downplaying the communicative value and function of emojis and argues that a structured interpretive approach could help courts more accurately infer meaning from typed communication in evidence
Triggering Change in Child Protection Law: A Case Study of Firearms and Domestic Violence in Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Ontario
Full text linkThe intertwining complexities of child protection, domestic violence, and firearms pose profound challenges for families and the legal system. This paper examines their interplay, focusing on how these issues can subject children to harm, with a specific focus on case law and relevant legislation from Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Ontario. These three provinces have been selected due to: i) the locality and inherent relevance of Nova Scotia’s jurisdiction given the location of the Schulich School of Law, ii) the high number of reported court decisions in Ontario, and the unique protections created through amending the Child, Youth, and Family Services Act, and iii) the relevance of Manitoba in this analysis as it has seen a stark increase (+103%) in firearm-related crimes over the last few years. While legislative reforms address the recognition of domestic violence, additional measures are necessary to mitigate the potential harm posed by firearms in abusive environments, which will ultimately safeguard the welfare of children
Lawyers and Public Service: Duty, Faith, and the \u27Good Republican\u27 in The West Wing
Full text linkPopular culture reveals much about the perceived role of lawyers in contemporary life. In this article, I draw lessons from the portrayal of lawyers in Aaron Sorkin\u27s classic television series, The West Wing. As a drama centred around a Democratic presidential administration, Republicans often provide the foil. From time to time, however, the show lionizes what might be termed ‘the good Republican’. That ‘good Republican’ is most often a practicing lawyer whose desire to serve is grounded in duty or faith. In this essay, I use a trio of these characters to explore the role of lawyers in public service. At first glance, these lawyers may seem to achieve goodness through a readiness to abandon their political views, particularly Republican views – suggesting that lawyers’ beliefs are malleable if not mercenary. At a deeper level, however, these characters and their experiences vividly convey idealized but worthwhile ideals of public service as a valuable and honourable career choice, particularly for lawyers
Tracy Anne Cloud & Kerry Lee Morris-Cormier: Implementing Indigenous Protected Conservation Areas
No full textJoin student writer, Rachel, for a discussion of Indigenous Protected Conservation Areas (IPCA) with two members from the Trilateral Team, Tracy Anne Cloud and Kerry Lee Morris-Cormier, at Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn Incorporated (MTI). Rachel speaks with Tracy Anne and Kerry Lee about what it looks like to implement an IPCA here in the Maritimes and motivations behind it. Rachel, Tracy Anne and Kerry Lee discuss challenges and critiques of IPCAs and finish with some advice for Indigenous nations and organizations that are wanting to develop their own IPCAs
The Unfulfilled Promise of Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux: A Case Study on the Reconciliation of Equality and Freedom of Association
No full textThe evolution of the protection of collective bargaining rights in Canada has been marked by a tension between freedom of association (section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “the Charter”) and equality (section 15(1) of the Charter). In most cases before the Supreme Court of Canada (“the SCC”), the SCC has examined both rights separately. More recently, the SCC has treated equality as a value (rather than a right), using the value of equality to inform its interpretation of freedom of association. Both these approaches (the “Siloed Approach” and the “Charter Values” approach) fail to fully examine how equality and freedom of association exist bidirectionally. This article uses a 2008 case from the Quebec Superior Court as a case study of how equality can inform our understanding of association and how association can remedy inequality.
L’évolution de la protection des droits à la négociation collective au Canada est marquée par une tension entre la liberté d’association (article 2(d) de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, « la Charte ») et l’égalité (article 15(1) de la Charte). Dans la plupart des affaires dont elle a été saisie, la Cour suprême du Canada (CSC) a examiné ces deux droits séparément. Récemment, la CSC a traité l’égalité comme une valeur (plutôt que comme un droit), en utilisant la valeur de l’égalité pour éclairer son interprétation de la liberté d’association. Les deux approches (l’approche « soit/soit » et l’approche des « valeurs de la Charte ») ne permettent pas d’examiner pleinement comment l’égalité et la liberté d’association existent de manière bidirectionnelle. Le présent article utilise un jugement rendu en 2008 par la Cour supérieure du Québec comme étude de cas pour montrer comment l’égalité peut éclairer notre compréhension de l’association et comment l’association peut remédier à l’inégalité