Criminal
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October 09, 2025
The case for human-centred elder justice
On a good day, 83-year-old Beatrice can still make a cup of tea and find her way to the park. But when she tries to fill out a digital form, the steps feel endless and confusing. For many people with dementia, even small hurdles can make it hard to get the help they need.
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October 09, 2025
Theme of World Day Against Death Penalty 2025: Use of death penalty as tool to oppress
This Friday marks the 23rd World Day Against the Death Penalty. On this day, abolitionists around the world call on governments that retain the practice to abolish capital punishment. We also use the day to draw attention to individual cases of those facing execution and plead for clemency, commutation or a reconsideration of the case altogether. A theme this year in the cases we are highlighting is the use of the death penalty as a tool to oppress.
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October 08, 2025
Fraser calls provinces’ demand to scrap Ottawa’s SCC arguments on notwithstanding clause ‘untenable’
Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser has pushed back against the demands of five premiers that Ottawa should drop its novel arguments at the Supreme Court that there are substantive constraints on governments’ powers to invoke the Charter’s s. 33 “notwithstanding” clause — arguments that those five provinces contend “represent a complete disavowal of the constitutional bargain that brought the Charter into being” in 1982.
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October 08, 2025
The Strong Borders Act and the road ahead: Charting Canada’s AML future
In part one of this series (see below for link), we traced the broad ambitions of Bill C-2, the so-called Strong Borders Act. We examined how Canada, under mounting domestic and international pressure, sought to overhaul its anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) framework, repositioning itself against increasingly sophisticated networks of financial crime (Government of Canada, 2025; FATF, 2022). That first instalment highlighted the bill’s sweeping recalibration of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA), its elevation of FINTRAC into a far more muscular regulator, and its attempt to harden Canada’s borders against precursor chemicals, illicit funds and contraband.
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October 08, 2025
R. v. Chand: A cautionary tale of generative AI and judicial intervention
This is the third article in a series building on my earlier discussion of AI hallucinations in the legal context and their prevalence.
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October 08, 2025
Miscarriage of Justice Canada targets B.C. government for mishandling wrongful conviction
The adage “justice delayed is justice denied” has a corollary: justice delayed is compensation denied. What happens when our criminal justice system makes a mistake? Fortunately, groups are stepping forward to correct an existing wrong. They are working to ensure that a wrongly convicted individual, Gerald Klassen, will ultimately be compensated for the injustice he endured at the hands of the state.
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October 07, 2025
B.C. introducing legislation to address sexual violence at post-secondary schools
The Government of British Columbia is introducing new legislation and an action plan to “strengthen support for post-secondary communities in preventing and responding to sexual violence.”
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October 07, 2025
Attorney General Sean Fraser tells SCC the law needs to protect people with ‘no voice’
There was a celebratory mood at the opening ceremony for the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2025-26 court year, but Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser and other legal leaders delivered a sober message to the Ottawa courtroom packed with lawyers and judges.
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October 07, 2025
Prevalence of AI hallucinations in the legal context
When it comes to legal research and the use of generative AI, the amount of false information being generated is alarming. However, the data varies depending on the study, the AI tools analyzed and how AI hallucinations manifest.
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October 07, 2025
Lawyer ordered to pay costs for non-disclosure of gen AI use and citing fake precedents in court
In a cautionary case for litigation lawyers who use generative artificial intelligence (AI) for court submissions, a Federal Court associate judge recently hit an immigration lawyer with personal costs for submitting two defective AI-generated precedents and for breaching the Federal Court’s requirement to disclose any generative AI use in court filings.