October 09, 2026
The Supreme Court of Canada has explained how three Criminal Code sentencing provisions should interact and be interpreted when both the victim and offender are Indigenous, and how sentencing circles fit into the mix. On Oct. 9, the top court split 5-4 to dismiss the Nova Scotia Crown’s appeal from a majority Nova Scotia Court of Appeal decision that reduced the five-year sentence a provincial court judge imposed on respondent Harry Arthur Cope to three years (less remand credit of 18 months): R. v. Cope, 2026 SCC 32.
October 08, 2026
British Columbia Chief Judge Melissa Gillespie has announced the appointment of Matthew Turnell, Manpreet Mand and David Jenkins as provincial court judges.
October 08, 2026
Every family lawyer has heard a client say, “I don’t care what it costs. I just want to win.” The recent costs ruling in Perera v. Perera, 2026 ONSC 5206 is what “winning” looks like.
October 07, 2026
Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser says the Liberal majority government will introduce “in weeks” groundbreaking legislation to permit persons with serious medical conditions to consent in advance to medical assistance in dying (MAID), i.e. before they lose their capacity to consent to the procedure. The planned bill would also bar MAID access on an “indeterminate basis” to persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness, he said.
October 06, 2026
Manitoba is looking to remove limitation periods for civil claims stemming from intimate partner violence involving “coercive control.” According to an Oct. 5 news release, the province has introduced legislative amendments to its Limitations Act that “would allow survivors to pursue civil action regardless of when the abuse occurred.”
October 06, 2026
Criminal court judges must remember that instructing a jury about evidence of fabrication is to be done only for the accused — not a complainant, says the lawyer of a man who maintains his ex-wife trumped up assault claims against him to gain an edge in their divorce.
October 06, 2026
Intergenerational estate freezes have long served as a bedrock mechanism for Canadian business owners seeking to defer tax and shelter wealth across generations. For years, corporate planners and family litigators assumed that routing future growth through a post-marriage discretionary family trust would cloak that interest as an excluded “gift after marriage” under Ontario’s Family Law Act (FLA).
October 05, 2026
Canada needs to find new ways to sustain and strengthen its democratic institutions, especially to drive home to Canadians how much their independent justice system benefits them in their daily lives, top jurists say. At the Oct. 5 ceremonial opening of the Supreme Court of Canada’s judicial year in Ottawa, Chief Justice of Canada Richard Wagner told the audience of lawyers and judges he appreciated that “across the country, I’ve seen many of you speak out publicly to reiterate the importance of the rule of law and of an independent judiciary.”
October 05, 2026
Saskatchewan has appointed its first associate judges to the Court of King’s Bench following legislation that came into force Oct. 1.
October 05, 2026
Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser has announced the appointment of eight judges in Ontario.