Family

  • June 30, 2025

    Saskatchewan furthering commitment to national plan tackling gender-based violence

    Saskatchewan is providing more than half a million dollars to several initiatives as part of the province’s ongoing rollout of a national plan to eradicate gender-based violence — with a chunk of the funds going toward an event promoting the “exchange of ideas” between lawyers, law enforcement and advocates.

  • June 30, 2025

    Alcohol-related driving offences in Canada: Immigration risks and visa application challenges

    Canada’s impaired driving laws are among the strictest in the world for the threshold of blood alcohol concentration that can trigger criminal inadmissibility under our justice and immigration laws. The legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) threshold for impaired driving is 0.08 per cent and has significant and potentially harsh consequences for both permanent residence holders and temporary immigration applicants. A single conviction for impaired driving under the Criminal Code is treated as “serious criminality” rendering an applicant inadmissible to Canada under Canadian immigration law.

  • June 30, 2025

    Saskatchewan regulator’s 2024 report highlights mental health, AI, competency

    Saskatchewan’s legal regulator was active last year in continuing its goals of increasing competency, minding members’ mental health and guiding lawyers in the use of artificial intelligence. The Law Society of Saskatchewan (LSS) laid out progress in these areas and others as part of its recently released annual report for 2024.

  • June 30, 2025

    Can Clare’s Law protect women from abuse?

    The first Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, better known as Clare’s Law, was passed in England and Wales in 2014. Named for Clare Wood, who was killed by her abusive former boyfriend, it provides a way for potential victims of intimate partner violence to find out whether their partner has a history of such violence.

  • June 27, 2025

    SCC clarifies appeal right from removal orders in immigration judicial review case

    In an immigration and statutory interpretation decision that sheds light on administrative law and how to analyze reasonableness in judicial review cases, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that foreign nationals may appeal removal orders to the Immigration and Refugee Board’s Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) if their visas were current on arrival in Canada, even if their visas expire after their arrival here.

  • June 27, 2025

    B.C. Court of Appeal increases damages award to parents who lost son, citing potential contributions

    The B.C. Court of Appeal has increased damages awarded to parents who lost their 17-year-old son in a car accident to include compensation for the unpaid work their son was likely to undertake during his university years.

  • June 27, 2025

    Justice Leslie Dellapinna retires from N.S. Supreme Court

    The Honourable Leslie J. Dellapinna is retiring from the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia (Family Division) after more than 24 years on the bench.

  • June 27, 2025

    Ontario Divisional Court confuses relocation law

    In Diallo v. Bah, 2025 ONSC 2106, released May 28, the Ontario Divisional Court has undercut, or possibly even overruled, a long-standing precedent for the resolution of interim or temporary relocation cases. Said Justice Harriet Sachs for the court: “The factors set out in Plumley, which was decided in 2014, have been overtaken by the amendments to the Divorce Act. The reasoning in Barendregt makes this clear.”

  • June 26, 2025

    The Friendly Bar series, No. 2: A Canada Day toast to the quiet work, and one another

    The Friendly Bar is a reflective series exploring how we, as legal professionals, can build a culture of collegiality, self-awareness and care toward each other and ourselves. This installment contemplates such a culture as we approach Canada Day.

  • June 26, 2025

    Ontario law society benchers tackle governance, family law reforms at June meeting

    Benchers of the Law Society of Ontario (LSO) met at convocation on June 25 with their newly re-elected leader pledging to restore trust in the regulator after a pay scandal surrounding its former CEO.