-
August 12, 2026
Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Geneviève Cotnam, who once recalled “my career as a lawyer didn’t always provide a smooth sailing to the bench,” is Quebec's new top judge, succeeding Quebec Court of Appeal Chief Justice Manon Savard who became a part-time (supernumerary) judge on Aug. 10.
-
August 12, 2026
The Federal Court has rejected the Crown’s bid to summarily dismiss an action brought by a retired three-star general of the Canadian Armed Forces, finding that the record did not establish that his veterans’ benefits compensated him for the same injuries and losses claimed in the lawsuit.
-
August 11, 2026
The current debate over Israel and Palestine provides a particularly difficult test of whether we can maintain those distinctions when political passions run high.
-
August 11, 2026
On Aug. 6, the Ontario Court of Appeal released its decision in Baker v. Van Dolder’s Home Team Inc., 2026 ONCA 568, which provides much-needed clarity to the enforceability of employment agreement termination provisions in Ontario. The court dealt with the appeal of Baker v. Van Dolder’s Home Team Inc., 2025 ONSC 952 together with a similar case, Li v. Wayfair Canada ULC, 2025 ONSC 2959, resolving an impasse as the trial judges had reached opposite conclusions in their respective interpretation of similar termination clauses.
-
August 11, 2026
Prosecutorial independence matters precisely because the power to prosecute is among the most consequential powers the state possesses.
-
August 10, 2026
The Ontario Court of Appeal has increased a former Meta employee’s damages by approximately US$4.7 million, finding that contract provisions requiring the immediate forfeiture of unvested restricted stock units (RSUs) upon termination contravened Ontario’s Employment Standards Act.
-
August 10, 2026
Canada has imposed sanctions on a Russian manufacturer of armoured vehicles that are used in Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine. On Aug. 10, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand announced that Canada sanctioned Streit Group, effective Aug. 6, under the Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations.
-
August 10, 2026
Two years after the Competition Act was amended to revise Canada’s merger review framework, new trends have emerged with significant implications for businesses: proposed transactions are increasingly being labelled as “complex,” facing longer wait times and receiving more scrutiny overall, according to an analysis of Competition Bureau data by Anita Banicevic, a partner at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP.
-
August 10, 2026
A 2024 call to the Ontario bar, Audrey Beaulieu-Lévesque has been named an associate at Massey LLP.
-
August 10, 2026
A number of recent Ontario cases have brought me back to a constitutional principle that tends to receive little public attention until confidence in it begins to erode: prosecutorial independence.
-
August 10, 2026
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Baker v. Van Dolder’s Home Team Inc., 2025 ONSC 952 and Li v. Wayfair Canada ULC., 2025 ONSC 2959, released together as Baker v. Van Dolder’s Home Team Inc., 2026 ONCA 568, is a significant development in Ontario employment law. For executive employment lawyers, Baker v. Van Dolder’s Home Team Inc. is the most significant decision since Waksdale v. Swegon North America Inc., 2020 ONCA 391.
-
August 07, 2026
The Federal Court of Appeal has set aside a trademark infringement judgment after concluding that the Federal Court’s decision was almost identical to the plaintiffs’ draft order, including its errors, and did not adequately explain its conclusions.
-
August 07, 2026
In Ontario, appellants do not have an inherent or common law right to appeal an underlying order. Appeal rights are “wholly a matter of statute.” Therefore, to determine whether and how to appeal an order, appellants must consult the governing legislation first.
-
August 06, 2026
The Alberta government has announced a new Surface Rights Advisory Panel to recommend improvements to the province’s system for resolving disputes when private land is used for resource development, following a record number of surface rights applications in 2025-26.
-
August 06, 2026
The Ontario Court of Appeal has upheld the dismissal of a defamation action brought by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) over comments suggesting it supported terrorism and Hamas, finding that the defence of fair comment applied even though the statements were defamatory and substantially untrue.
-
August 06, 2026
Changes to B.C.’s Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act are now in effect, modernizing consumer protection laws that “regulate consumer contracts to better reflect the marketplace, promote fairness and transparency, strengthen consumer rights and help people make informed financial decisions.”
-
August 06, 2026
The Ontario government is proposing changes to “modernize and streamline 13 natural resource permits,” which would allow mining and infrastructure projects to “move forward faster and with greater certainty.”
-
August 05, 2026
On Aug. 5, the Ontario government announced that it would be “strengthening oversight of key provincial agencies by launching a series of reviews to ensure they are sustainable and that the vital frontline services that families and businesses rely on are protected and continuously improved.”
-
August 05, 2026
Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner Anton Boegman has issued guidance about when “licensed legal professionals” are required to register their work for foreign principals as “influence activities” in the new public foreign influence registry. The new commissioner issued five interpretation bulletins — including one specifically for lawyers — to give guidance on how to comply with the obligations under the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act (FITAA) and its regulations, which came into force Aug. 4.
-
August 05, 2026
Corporations Canada released its 2025 annual report on Aug. 5, which showed some progress on advancing diversity on boards of directors and in senior management of federal distributing corporations.
-
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.
-
August 04, 2026
New legal requirements to register foreign influence activities kicked in today, with the entry into force of the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act and its regulations. On Aug. 4, the federal government stood up its long-awaited public registry of foreign influence activities, implementing an election promise made by the previous Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government.
-
August 04, 2026
Rules of professional conduct are an important tool in regulating the ethical conduct of professionals and protecting the public. A professional who chooses to not abide by the rules of their respective profession can face severe sanction, including the revocation of their licence. In the legal profession, the continued misuse of generative artificial intelligence to conduct legal research and assist in the drafting of factums or legal briefs has caused courts worldwide to impose costs sanctions against offending lawyers and to refer them for discipline to their respective regulatory body.
-
August 04, 2026
The Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) has released its first merits decision interpreting the new replacement worker provisions under the Canada Labour Code, which were introduced in 2025 through Bill C-58. The decision clarifies that the new rules do not create a blanket prohibition on the use of replacement workers in unionized federally regulated workplaces but instead restrict the use of specified categories of persons during lawful strikes and lockouts.
-
July 31, 2026
The Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously set out the presumptions, procedure and remedies applicable to litigated claims of “spoliation” — i.e., claims against parties who engage in the “intentional destruction, alteration, mutilation, or concealment of evidence with a view to subverting the truth-finding process during litigation.”