Pulse
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December 19, 2025
A season for sharing: The legal and moral case for ensuring everyone has enough food at Christmas
Every Christmas, families across Canada gather around warm meals that symbolize dignity, community and care. Yet for many households in Alberta and across the country, rising costs and winter pressures make it difficult to afford even the most basic groceries. Food insecurity turns what should be a season of comfort into a time of anxiety.
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December 19, 2025
Manitoba Court of Appeal tasked with determining psychological detention
Psychological detention occurs when a person submits to a police officer’s authority or is deprived of liberty, reasonably believing the choice to do otherwise does not exist (R. v. Tessier, 2022 SCC 35). One would expect that raising psychological detention on appeal from conviction would be a simple, fact-driven analysis. Yet the Manitoba Court of Appeal took 256 paragraphs to rule out psychological detention as a basis for Charter relief. The court’s reasons are in R. v. Francois, 2025 MBCA 93.
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December 18, 2025
Darwish A. Chahbar joins McCague Borlack as associate
McCague Borlack LLP has added Darwish A. Chahbar as an associate in its London, Ont., office.
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December 18, 2025
Torys announces new partners and counsel for 2026
Torys LLP has promoted seven lawyers to partner and four lawyers to counsel, the firm has announced.
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December 17, 2025
SCC rejects latest bid to get intervener counsel into court; AGs & other interveners limited to Zoom
The Supreme Court of Canada is poised to hear argument from dozens of interveners in a groundbreaking case about the Charter’s “notwithstanding” clause and the “architecture” and “unwritten principles” of the Constitution, however, intervener counsel won’t be allowed to set foot in the top court’s iconic Ottawa courtroom.
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December 17, 2025
Feds appoint 2 judges to Nova Scotia Supreme Court
The federal government has announced two judicial appointments to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, according to the Department of Justice.
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December 17, 2025
New Indigenous sentencing court opens in Chilliwack, B.C.
The Provincial Court of British Columbia opened the province’s tenth Indigenous sentencing court on Dec. 11 in Chilliwack. Indigenous courts currently operate in nine other B.C. communities.
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December 17, 2025
View from inside: Sleep in jail
We all know that decent sleep is important for mental and physical health. Lots of people struggle to get a good night’s sleep consistently. Jails and prisons, though, seem to set out to make it hard to get a decent night’s sleep — just one of the many ways these places work against their stated purpose of helping people who commit crimes rehabilitate.
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December 16, 2025
Ottawa sanctions four senior Iranian officials for gross human rights violations in Iran
Ottawa has imposed sanctions against four Iranian senior officials who the federal government says “have been involved in gross and systematic human rights violations” in the Islamic Republic of Iran where they “have had a significant role in facilitating and directing repressive policies.”
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December 16, 2025
Ontario appoints 2 new judges
The federal government has appointed two new judges in Ontario, including one to the province’s top court, the Department of Justice has announced.