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Deciding on Death: Rodriguez, Carter, and Medically Assisted Dying in Canada
No full textShould Canadians have the right to medical assistance in dying? That question has galvanized debate since the early 1990s, when Sue Rodriguez unsuccessfully challenged the criminalization of assisted dying. The Supreme Court of Canada subsequently reversed its position in a 2015 case initially brought by the family of Kay Carter, who had travelled outside the country for access to an assisted death.
Deciding on Death provides a comprehensive history of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canadian law through a close analysis of the Rodriguez and Carter decisions. It also traces the political and legislative developments before and after those landmark cases. The controversy is ongoing, with unresolved questions about medical assistance for mature minors, those with mental illness, and persons making advance requests. However, Carter clarified the circumstances under which the court was willing to overrule its own decisions and elucidated the Charter right to life, liberty, and security of the person.
Legalization of medically assisted dying has finally given many Canadians with incurable medical conditions that cause them intolerable suffering the ability to choose the manner and timing of their death. Over fifteen thousand people per year now pursue that option. This timely book explains how we got here and the decisions that still lie ahead.
Deciding on Death illuminates a controversial and deeply personal topic for scholars and students of political science, law, and society, as well as for politicians, medical practitioners, and a wider readership, as these legal decisions will affect everyone’s consideration of their own end of life.https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/faculty_books/1447/thumbnail.jp
JLSP Symposium 2025 Part 2 - Social Assistance as Legislated Poverty: You Can\u27t Afford To Stay Here!
No full textThe theme of this year\u27s symposium was: Power and Property: Who Belongs in the City? Through the following expert panels, the symposium brought together legal academics, legal aid lawyers, and community advocates, to explore critical issues of displacement, power, and property in urban spaces
Panel 4 - AI, Tax Avoidance and Disputes Resolution
No full textChair: Ivan Ozai (Queen’s University)
Jean-Pierre Vidal (HEC Motréal) and Natalie Goulard (Spiegel Ryan), Economic Substance in Section 245: Can AI Help Humans?
Geoffrey Loomer (University of Victoria), Tax Treaty Shopping in the Digital Era: Is Canada Responding Effectively?
Commentators: Jeffrey Trossman (Blakes); Catherine Brown (University of Calgary
Panel 2 - Tax Sovereignty: Legitimate Authority and Boundaries
No full textChair: Geoffrey Loomer (University of Victoria)
Tsilly Dagan (University of Oxford), Rethinking Tax Sovereignty: Between Power and Legitimate Authority
Jennifer Farrell (Western University), Tax implications of the new EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation Rules
Commentators: Stephen Shay (Boston College); Cees Peters (Tilburg University
Freedom of Peaceful Assembly Under Section 2(c) of the Charter: A Call for Action
No full text“A Call for Action” builds on the author’s previous work on s.2(c) for the Rouleau Commission (“Freedom of Assembly and Section 2(c) of the Charter”; available on SSRN and Osgoode Digital Commons). There is no framework of legality under the Charter for the scope and limits of peaceful assembly, and this follow-up paper begins the task of filling that gap. It addresses the relationship between s.2(b) and s.2(c), critiquing the “factual matrix principle” for subsuming issues freedom of assembly into freedom of expression, and explaining that assembly is a distinctive collective entitlement that is spatial and performative in nature. A definition of “peaceful” that protects assemblies that are disruptive and access to space are the two critical variables in determining the scope of entitlement. Under s.2(c)’s conception of “peaceful”, gatherings are protected up to the point of violence, leaving the question of justifiable limits on relative degrees of disruption to section 1. In addition, access to public space, for purposes of engaging in peaceful assembly, is part of the entitlement. By definition, an assembly is spatial and s.2(c) therefore must protect access to space. Those two elements ground a robust conception of peaceful assembly. The paper closes by discussing the principles that guide the s.1 analysis when s.2(c) is at stake
Taking Proportionality Seriously: A Countercultural Approach
No full textProportionality was introduced into Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure in 2008. A plain reading of Rules 1.04(1) and (1.1) is the ‘traditional’ interpretation of proportionality: that proportionality is merely the means of furthering efficiency and economy in individual cases, with the aim of better securing substantive justice on the merits in those cases. The relative measure is what is at stake in the individual case. This article suggests a counter-cultural interpretation: that proportionality is equal in importance to substantive justice and that, in certain circumstances, substantive justice in individual cases must give way to proportionality, in order to secure the just distribution of resources for all cases. The relative measure is what is at stake for the civil justice system as a whole, with justice defined more collectively. This article posits that proportionality can effect a change in our legal culture, but only if we accept a countercultural definition of that word
Allocative Justice as a Constraint on Fiscal Imperialism in International Tax
No full textTaxpayers’ cross-border activities often result in two (or more) states claiming the right to tax their income. To address concerns about how those tax liabilities might aggregate and suppress international activities, states typically agree to split the tax base between them. But how can states fairly share tax revenue from cross-border activities? Tax scholars and policymakers offer different normative perspectives to address this inter-nation equity conundrum. In this article, we conceptualize these normative perspectives into two types. One centres on identifying where the economic factors that lead to the ability to produce the income are located (and uses that determination as the basis for an equitable split of taxing rights). Accordingly, a state with a greater degree of economic connection should enjoy a greater share of taxing rights. This perspective, we contend, is distinguishable from the infusion of cosmopolitan distributive justice theory into tax law. The latter approach portrays the redistribution or transfer of tax revenue, a form of tax aid from high-income countries to low-income countries, usually with the goal of funding humanitarian or developmental spending. Perhaps due to ambiguities in the overarching inter-nation equity concept (which seemingly includes cosmopolitan distributive justice) existing tax policy scholarship often fails to adequately distinguish the two perspectives when articulating the justifications for international taxing rights (re)allocation involving low-income countries. This article demonstrates the policy imperatives for distinguishing the two perspectives. For textual and conceptual clarity, we frame the first perspective as “allocative justice” and the latter as “redistributive justice.” For low-income countries to escape the trap of fiscal imperialism it is essential that they (as well as international tax policymakers in all states) establish international tax regimes that align with allocative justice and resist tax bargains that unduly cede taxing rights to which they have a justifiable claim. Redistributive justice may also play a role in supporting or explaining tax sharing arrangements between countries, but that framework should not be conflated with allocative justice
JLSP Symposium 2025 Part 1 - Legal Responses to Displacement: The Role of Legal Advocates in Protecting the Unhoused
No full textThe theme of this year\u27s symposium was: Power and Property: Who Belongs in the City? Through the following expert panels, the symposium brought together legal academics, legal aid lawyers, and community advocates, to explore critical issues of displacement, power, and property in urban spaces
Global Justice in the Reshaping of International Tax
No full textGlobal digitalization and economic decentralization have reshaped the landscape of international tax policy, prompting substantial reforms led by the OECD, most notably its ‘two-pillar solution’ aimed at addressing the taxation challenges of the digital economy. This article contends that these reforms fall short of incorporating principles of global justice. The analysis critiques both the technical and normative flaws of prevailing international tax policy design approaches, revealing how its intricate, technocratic framework conceals underlying distributional biases and neglects the developmental needs of less advantaged states. It calls for international tax reforms centred on fairness, advocating for explicit consideration of distributional outcomes to ensure a more just and balanced allocation of resources and responsibilities across nations