The Complete Brief
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March 12, 2026
Sound of silence sinks deal: Settlement agreements need sharper drafting
The Ontario Superior Court’s decision in Cross v. Cooling Tower Maintenance Inc., 2025 ONSC 7203 is a useful reminder that settlement agreements must be drafted with care, especially where salary continuance, mitigation obligations and repayment provisions are involved. If counsel intend a breach to trigger serious consequences, those consequences must be set out clearly. Courts will enforce the agreement the parties made, not the one that one side later wishes it had drafted.
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March 12, 2026
N.W.T. issues ‘What We Heard’ report on planned trespass laws
Many residents of the Northwest Territories consider trespassing on private property to be a problem and want laws that give them more tools to remove trespassers, require them to identify themselves and allow their arrest.
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March 12, 2026
Lowering the rate of Indigenous over-incarceration in Saskatchewan
Canada’s criminal law is written in Ottawa, but the provinces enforce it. That constitutional division helps explain why incarceration rates vary so dramatically across the country. Nowhere is the contrast more striking than in Saskatchewan, which has at times recorded the highest incarceration rate in Canada and one of the highest among sub-national jurisdictions in the western world.
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March 12, 2026
SENTENCING - Offences against person and reputation - Offences relating to conveyances
Appeal by Georgopoulos from a sentence of two and a half years’ imprisonment and a six-year driving prohibition imposed following his conviction for dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm. The appellant, a 42-year-old mortgage broker with no criminal record, was driving and while attempting to pass a streetcar, he accelerated from 52 km/h to 112 km/h in a 40 km/h zone without braking, striking a parked car, the streetcar, and another vehicle.
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March 12, 2026
Student paper snapshots in animal law: Animals vs. plastics
As part of my ongoing Student Paper Snapshots in Animal Law series in these pages, I am not only featuring my own animal law students from the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC, but I have also invited students from other universities to showcase their thought-provoking research papers.
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March 12, 2026
Recent amendments to Ontario’s Construction Act
The Construction Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.30 as we know it today originally came into force on March 1, 1983, as the Construction Lien Act. This Act laid the foundation of construction law in Ontario. The Construction Lien Act was amended and renamed as the Construction Act on July 1, 2018. The purpose of the Construction Act is to ensure the protection of contractors, subcontractors and suppliers. It provides an efficient structure to protect them by securing prompt payment methods with strict deadline rules and resolving construction disputes through an adjudication process.
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March 11, 2026
Ontario court certifies class action against Johnson & Johnson over baby powder cancer risk
The Ontario Superior Court has certified a nationwide class action concerning allegations that Johnson & Johnson’s talc-based baby powder increased the risk of ovarian cancer and was marketed without adequate warnings.
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March 11, 2026
CFIB warns 1.3M expiring work permits will increase labour challenges
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) is warning that more than 1.3 million work permits, including those for temporary foreign workers (TFWs), are set to expire by the end of 2026, which it says will significantly threaten economic and labour challenges.
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March 11, 2026
Ottawa extends temporary work-sharing EI measures to help employers avert mass layoffs from tariffs
The federal government is extending temporary special measures under the employment insurance work-sharing program until March 31, 2027, from March 6, 2026, to help employers facing unexpected slowdowns avoid layoffs and maintain stability for their workers.
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March 11, 2026
Alberta’s residential tenancies law isn’t working as well as it should, lawyer says
An Alberta-based legal institute is bringing attention to the province’s rental housing law, saying it needs a major update. The Alberta Law Reform Institute (ALRI) is saying the Residential Tenancies Act, which has not undergone comprehensive review in over 30 years, has become out of step with social, economic and technological realities. Because of that, the institute has undertaken a review of the law.