August 17, 2026
A coalition of legal and civil rights groups has launched a constitutional challenge to Ontario’s new cash bail requirements, arguing the rules create a “two-tier” justice system that favours people who can afford to pay for their release. Changes to the bail system came into effect on Aug. 17, and among other things require a cash security deposit in the full amount pledged to be paid once an accused person is released into custody, with payment due within two business days of release.
August 17, 2026
Justice, Ontario Judge Brock Jones recently reminded us, is not simply a matter of punishment: sometimes it requires looking beyond a troubling criminal record to the illness underlying the offending and asking whether treatment, rather than incarceration, better protects society: R. v. Gowers, Aug. 10.
August 14, 2026
Manitoba has signed an agreement with a Cree First Nation to establish a community court focusing on Cree legal traditions, restorative justice and “culturally grounded approaches” to justice.
August 13, 2026
Speed has dominated how we talk about artificial intelligence. AI can generate an image in seconds, draft a song before lunch or produce a dozen variations of a story without getting tired. AI can make artistic production faster and more accessible, but the arts have never been valuable simply because they are difficult to produce. We value them because someone chose to make them, because a human being noticed something, felt something and found a way to share it. With AI becoming more capable, human skills behind art do not disappear. They become easier to see, and, increasingly, easier to defend, since copyright itself now turns on identifying the human contribution in a work.
August 13, 2026
I’ve made the case regularly in these columns that imprisonment, even for a short time, has long-term negative effects on people and makes it harder for people to live positive, pro-social lives. Yet most people who get imprisoned in Canada do not return to prison; high recidivism rates are mainly a result of a relatively small number of people who are imprisoned over and over again.
August 12, 2026
As time went by and I got used to the realities of the parole board job, decisions came easier. But whenever we were seeing someone who had committed very violent offences, I could not help but be aware of the impact on others that a positive decision would have. My colleagues may have had different backgrounds but were equally concerned about possible ramifications from their decisions.
August 12, 2026
Parole. Not a weightless word, is it?
August 07, 2026
In March 1986, Lloyd Perkins was in jail in central Illinois. He disclosed to a fellow inmate (Donald Charlton) that he had murdered somebody in St. Louis a couple of years earlier. Charlton told the police. The police investigated. When they located Perkins, he was in a different jail for an unrelated crime.
August 05, 2026
The due process clauses in the Fifth and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution were established to protect all persons from being deprived of “life, liberty, or property” without due process of law.
August 05, 2026
A unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada has struck down a privative clause that restricted the grounds for judicial review of an exercise of statutory authority: Democracy Watch v. Canada (Attorney General), 2026 SCC 28.