Alberta Law Review (ALR)
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Restructuring Challenges in the Oil and Gas Sector: The Treatment of Regulatory Orders Post-Redwater
Get PDFCompanies within the Alberta energy sector are currently unable to satisfy amounts outstanding to their creditors and at the same time fulfill their environmental responsibilities, culminating in a fight over whether provincial or federal statutes have priority when it comes to the environmental obligations of insolvent oil and gas companies. This article identifies recent legal developments relevant to corporate restructurings in the Alberta energy sector, examining the Alberta Energy Regulator’s treatment of exploration and production companies, the licensee liability rating program, and the practical challenges that Alberta Energy Regulator’s licensees and creditors face in the current economic and regulatory climate. Finally, this article analyzes options for facilitating the sale of licenced assets
Police Use of Force: Assessing Necessity and Proportionality
Get PDFThis article seeks to clarify the limits imposed on police use of force. It argues that police use of force must be necessary, proportional and lawful. Police officers’ safety practice often leads them to act on mere suspicion and contradicts with the probability-based thinking required by law — there must be reasonable grounds to warrant the use of force. Therefore, this article proposes an alternative use of force model adopted by the Edmonton Police. The Edmonton model has been successful in guiding police officers to focus on objectively discernible facts to support their subjective beliefs to meet the threshold on the use of force
Toward Tort Liability for Bad Samaritans
Get PDFGood Samaritan laws are common throughout Canada and the United States. The rationalefor the development of Good Samaritans law has been that the benefit of immunity for GoodSamaritans is more altruistic than the punishment of liability for Bad Samaritans. However,our tort law’s declaration that one need not assist one in danger weakens the moral statureof our law. Our law supports those who do the right thing and denounces those who do thewrong thing. The intrusiveness of liability for bystanders is usually argued against BadSamaritan laws. However potential liability is rare; the moral stature of our law is worththe effort to resolve this issue
Do We Really Need the Anns Test for Duty of Care in Negligence?
Get PDFSince its formal adoption in 1984, the Supreme Court of Canada has applied the Anns test31 times. This article uses those decisions to assess the test’s value in negligence law. Basedon that analysis, the Anns test has two disadvantages: (1) it treats dissimilar duty questionsas if they were alike; and (2) it can divert courts into an Anns analysis when a more directapproach to duty of care would be better. However, despite its disadvantages, three decadesof continued use by the Supreme Court makes it unlikely that the Anns test will beabandoned anytime soon
Life after Jarvis—Just How Much Help Must You "Voluntarily" Give the Canada Revenue Agency?
Get PDFSociety recognizes that privacy rights must be compromised to allow the State to administer and enforce an efficient and effective income tax regime. The question is — just how great should that compromise be? How much financial information should the State be allowed to require from its constituents to prepare, maintain and disclose on a "voluntary" basis for income tax purposes? Most importantly, for what purposes should this information obtained by the State be legitimately used, given the Charter and the criminal law privacy protections contained therein? In particular, can the Slate use its mandatory compliance powers to obtain information which would then be used to further a criminal investigation? Where is the line drawn? Although the 2002 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Jarvis provides some clarification and guidance, it does not go far enough in setting out the proper balance between a person s right to privacy and the State\u27s need for disclosure in the income tax context. The purposes of this article are: (a) to provide a brief overview of a person\u27s obligations to voluntarily provide both information and assistance to the State as part of the operation of the income tax regime, (b) to critically analyze the Jarvis decision in conjunction with previous jurisprudence to gain insight as to when the State will lose the ability to compel a person to assist it in its administration and enforcement duties, (c) to examine some post-Jarvis decisions to see how the State and the courts have responded to and applied the principles as set out in Jarvis, and (d) to provide some suggestions on how taxpayers, advisors and the Canada Revenue Agency might approach matters of this nature in the future
The Constitutionality of the New Sex Work Law
Get PDFIn this article, the author considers the constitutionality of Canada’s new law on prostitution: Bill C-36. When the new sex work law was first introduced into Parliament, a number of advocacy groups and commentators argued that it was unconstitutional because of its failure to respond to the concerns raised in Bedford v. Canada, a case where the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the old sex work law on the ground that its negative impact on sex workers’ security of the person outweighed its nuisance abatement objective. This author agrees that Bill C-36 may be unconstitutional, but for a different reason. The new sex work law adheres to the constitutional norms invoked in Bedford by making use of two novel policy objectives: discouraging sex work and reducing the danger of sex work to sex workers. In practice, however, these objectives are likely to conflict with one another. As a result, Bill C-36 is an incoherent piece of legislation that may be unconstitutional for creating arbitrary and grossly disproportionate effects on the security of the person of sex workers
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2016)
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The Legal and Regulatory Treatment of Cogeneration in Alberta
Get PDFCogeneration is the simultaneous production of electricity and heat from a single fuel source in a process. It allows for a more efficient and effective use of valuable primary energy resources when compared with the independent production of electricity and heat. Cogeneration is therefore attractive to both the private sector and policy-makers because it delivers a range of economic benefits and can be an important strategy in meeting greenhouse gas mitigation targets. This article examines the current legal and regulatory treatment of cogeneration in Alberta in the industrial sector. The authors argue that, given the scale and importance of cogeneration to the province’s industrial sector, and to the province generally, it is perhaps time that Alberta developed a clear and coherent policy on cogeneration
Prenatal Harm and the Duty of Care
Get PDFIn this article, the author explores the jurisprudence surrounding a contentious area of tortlaw: wrongful life claims. These claims focus on the situation in which the physician’snegligence lies in the failure to provide the child’s parents with the opportunity to preventthe birth of the child. Historically, courts have been unreceptive to wrongful life claims, andcurrent Canadian jurisprudence on this issue lacks clarity owing to inconsistent treatmentof these cases by the courts. The author exposes errors in reasoning in two cases decided bythe Ontario Court of Appeal, noting that these cases add to the incoherence of the legallandscape. She concludes with an appeal for Supreme Court authority or legislation toclarify the law
Alberta\u27s Statutory Privacy Regime and its Impact on the Workplace
No full textThe author describes the tension created by the new privacy legislation between the individual values of personal privacy and the common values of the workplace. There is a detailed discussion of the respective obligations of employers and employees to protect and make accessible personal records held by the employer. The article focuses on various types of employee information, including health information, and discusses in what circumstances they can be disclosed to an employer. Next, the developing impact of the privacy statutes on labour law is surveyed, specifically the rights of unions to obtain employees\u27 personal information. Then the author examines the extent of employee personal information the employer is entitled to have and in what circumstances by surveying three controversial areas: video and other surveillance, drug and alcohol testing and electronic monitoring in the workplace. She concludes that privacy legislation is having a major impact on rights and relationships between employers and employees