Alberta Law Review (ALR)
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Pathways to Ruin? High-Risk Offending Over the Life Course, Erin Gibbs Van, Brunschot & Tamara Humphrey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022)
Full text linkThe Implementation of UNDRIP: Legal Dimensions of Indigenous Peoples’ Cultural Heritage and Property in Canada
Full text linkCanada, both federally and in British Columbia, has formally adopted the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Despite Canada’s adoption of UNDRIP, the laws, customs, and practices of Indigenous Peoples are sui generis and must be recognized and applied as such. This article considers the nature of Indigenous culture and heritage and the potential for recognition and protection on a proprietary basis judicially or legislatively — or a combination of both — within the framework of UNDRIP. This article further considers a means of linkage between federal and provincial law on the one hand, and Indigenous peoples’ law, custom, or practice on the other. Lastly, this article examines various or ancillary matters that are essential to establishing justiciability in the recognition and protection of heritage and culture of Indigenous peoples
The Regulatory Offence Revolution in Criminal Justice: The Expansive Role of Regulatory Offences
Full text linkCriminal law scholarship and judicial decisions devote significant attention to crimes, especially the most salient ones. In contrast, regulatory offences receive much less scrutiny and matter much more than we think.
This first part of a two-part article on regulatory offences argues that these offences occupy an ever-expanding role in the criminal justice system. It advances four core arguments. First, police officers may enforce regulatory offences to gather information and produce intelligence. Second, these offences can facilitate pretextual police interventions and investigation cascades. Third, police departments may leverage regulatory offences to generate revenue in a manner that evades political backlash against local governments. Fourth, these offences can contribute to criminal law localism. Together, the volume of regulatory offences — and their expansive role — can also facilitate disparate and discriminatory enforcement practices. Ultimately, this article highlights the various functions of regulatory offences and demonstrates why they matter for reasons we typically overlook
Untangling the Gordian Knot: Regulating Federal Transfers in Canada
Full text linkConditional transfers comprise the majority of transfers received by the provinces from the federal government in Canada. The conditions attached to such transfers can afford the federal government a role in provincial matters, but there are no clear guidelines on when conditional transfers are ultra vires the federal government. This article explores the constitutionality of conditional transfers, beginning with an exploration of their past and present role in Canadian intergovernmental relations. It discusses the potential for conditional transfers to enhance federalism, and assesses the shortcomings of the current Canadian approach in facilitating intergovernmental collaboration. Finally, this article explores how courts can increase the compatibility of conditional transfers with federalism by ensuring the transfers are voluntary, consensual, unambiguous, binding, and reasonable
Lawyers in a Warming World
Full text linkClimate change is the great disrupter of humanity, and the Canadian legal profession is at an inflection point. This article begins by briefly outlining the self-governing legal profession’s duties in Canada to uphold and protect the public interest in the administration of justice, including ensuring competencies. It then chronicles, and engages in a comparative analysis of, climate change-related resolutions and actions taken across 15 legal bars, societies, and associations around the world and situates those actions to current measures in Canada. In addressing some of the barriers found within self-regulatory bodies and voluntary associations for Canadian lawyers, the article then provides a basic primer for lawyers to understand the growing significance of climate change impacts on legal systems and civilizations and its potential to undermine legal rights. It identifies further areas of research that are needed regarding legal competencies in understanding climate-related risks and opportunities in relation to lawyers’ duty of care to their clients in Canada. Rapid developments in the law and evolving risk registers in response to a warming world are creating new understandings of what constitutes climate competent lawyering. This article lays the groundwork for further work in climate-related actions for the Canadian legal profession
The Iroquois Pipeline Project: A Study in Federal/State Conflict
Full text linkIn this paper, the author reviews the genesis of the Iroquois Pipeline Project, outlines the regulatory authorization process, and discusses the construction of the pipeline and conflicts which arose in New York and Connecticut, prior to and during construction. He then analyzes the litigation arising in the aftermath of construction, specifically the National Fuel decision, as well as future regulatory control over the pipeline
Health Information Privacy and the Law: Narrowing Alberta\u27s Accountability Gaps
No full textCurrent Alberta law does not adequately respond to violations of health information privacy. While privacy is an ill-defined concept in general, there is no uncertainty as to the importance of privacy in relation to personal health information. The increasing use of electronic means to generate and store health information creates an urgent demand for legal regimes that protect the privacy of health information, and that provide mechanisms to facilitate accountability when privacy is infringed. This author explores health information management, Alberta’s current legal landscape in relation to personal information protection, and methods to enhance accountability that can and should be implemented in Alberta
Access to Justice for Victims of Economic Exploitation
Full text linkResearch in intimate partner violence (IPV) has established that economic abuse, including economic exploitation, is an important form of IPV that is often used to trap victims in an abusive relationship. Though victims of all types of IPV encounter particular barriers to accessing justice, there are particular issues for those victimized by economic exploitation. This article explains the prevalence and consequences of economic exploitation and explores the indicators that victims lack access to justice. It proposes the primary obstacles victims of economic exploitation encounter and urges specific actions to assist lawyers, judges, and legislators in recognizing economic exploitation in intimate partner relationships and promoting appropriate remedies. This is particularly important for women, which data analysis indicates are at greater risk for this type of abuse
The Business of Egg Transactions and Need for Improved Regulation of the Fertility Industry in Canada
Full text linkIn Canada, ethical and legal debates around egg donation have largely focused on the question of whether egg providers should be paid, since payment for egg donation is prohibited through the federal Assisted Human Reproduction Act, 2004. One of the generally overlooked issues, however, is the potential for fertility clinics and agencies to mistreat egg providers. There is little legal oversight of the practices of fertility clinics and agencies in Canada, and scholars have raised concerns about the potential for mistreatment of egg providers. This article examines the medical care of egg providers in Canada by presenting data from qualitative interviews with 14 egg providers. While some egg providers felt well cared for, others were left feeling like a means to an end — they felt that insufficient information was provided for consent, there was an inability to communicate with the clinic, and they were physically mistreated. I argue that not only do egg providers’ experiences run contrary to the CMA Code of Ethics, but they also run contrary to laws, regulations, and guidelines that are intended to ensure that people who undergo fertility treatments are not harmed
The Virtual Physician: Clarifying Medical Liability Issues in the Use of Remote Patient Monitoring
Full text linkMore than ever before, information and communication technologies are playing an important role in the provision of health care services. As a form of telehealth, remote patient monitoring (RPM) uses information technologies and telecommunication tools to collect health data from patients outside of traditional health care institutional settings and transmit the data to health care providers for monitoring and evaluation. There are many challenges to RPM’s greater implementation in health care, including the potential for risk of harm for patients, and uncertainty regarding the liability of physicians utilizing RPM. Uncertain medical liability may have a chilling effect on the greater clinical use of RPM. To date, medical liability issues regarding RPM have not been addressed by courts and there is a paucity of literature on the topic. This article attempts to clarify some of the liability issues raised by RPM. To help guide physicians in their use of RPM, I propose the adoption of professional guidelines specific to RPM that courts can use in determining whether physicians have breached relevant standards of practice. Furthermore, by providing evidence-based standards, guidelines can mitigate risks of patient injury and reduce physicians’ reticence to adopt RPM