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Key decisions involving the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Saturday, April 21st, 2012
Apr 21 2012
Among the highlights: … • If you’re charged with a crime, you have a right to see all relevant evidence in your case; police and prosecution cannot withhold information that could potentially work in your favour. • Police can’t search your home without a warrant, but they’re free to go through your garbage if it’s on your property line. If you’ve thrown a tissue in a garbage can, police can take it for DNA testing. • Elementary or high-school officials can search student backpacks or lockers for illegal drugs, without a warrant. • You cannot help another person commit suicide…
Tags: rights, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Mentally ill win right to challenge their lawyer’s performance
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
Feb 21 2012
While effective legal assistance is seen as crucial at a criminal trial, where an accused person’s freedom is at stake, it is no less serious in the mental health context, where treatment decisions affecting a person’s liberty, dignity and right to self-determination are also at issue, said Justice Eleanore Cronk, writing for the appeal court… Without “the availability of effective assistance of counsel who is prepared to undertake fearless advocacy for the allegedly incapable patient at the board capacity hearing, the right of self-determination in respect of medical treatment becomes illusory,” she said.
Tags: disabilities, rights, standard of living
Posted in Equality Delivery System | 2 Comments »
Ontario legal aid plan to relax qualifying rules
Friday, October 28th, 2011
Oct 27 2011
Now, 16 years after the Ontario government tightened the rules in a massive overhaul of legal aid, it seems that’s about to change… they plan to loosen the rules over the next three years so more people are eligible for free help from a lawyer. The expansion, they say, will be funded through savings on the administrative side… The report notes Legal Aid Ontario’s cut-offs are substantially below the low-income threshold set by Statistics Canada… Canada is behind much of the world when it comes to legal aid qualifying guidelines…
Posted in Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Chief justice seeks compulsory mediation in family cases
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
Sep 15 2010
Winkler said he questions the value of continuing to “fine tune” the existing system and believes a new approach is required… In 2008-09, there were 313,470 family law hearings in the Ontario Court of Justice and the Superior Court of Justice… Between 85,000 and 90,000 new cases are opened every year… Compelling litigants to enter into mediation or arbitration would constitute “a fairly significant shift in policy” and “raises all sorts of questions for me about who would pay for this,” said Kelly Jordan, a Toronto family lawyer.
Tags: rights, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Canada’s ‘more humane society’ saved economy: Krugman
Monday, August 16th, 2010
Aug 16 2010
“It is not at all clear when and how this ends.”… A “combination of good luck but mostly good policy” have allowed Canadians to be spared the horrors that Americans have faced, he added. And that good policy includes a safety net of employment insurance and social programs. Canada being “a basically more humane society,” Krugman said, “has meant the suffering is far less.”
Tags: economy, globalization, poverty
Posted in Debates | 1 Comment »
One in three Ontario criminal verdicts overturned
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
Jul 05 2010
A statistical analysis of five years’ worth of the court’s cases… shows approximately 35 per cent of criminal appeals succeed… Most criminal appeals are brought by people convicted of crimes, but they also include Crown appeals of an acquittal or sentence imposed by a trial court… The appeal court set aside trial decisions in 34 per cent of family cases and 27 per cent of civil cases. Ontario Chief Justice Warren Winkler said… the most surprising statistic was the number of people arguing motions before the court without lawyers.
Tags: standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
The Charter’s challenges
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
Apr 07 2010
…the Charter is at a crossroads. While there may be much to celebrate, the process of using it to establish rights is time-consuming and expensive, almost entirely dependent on government subsidies and the benevolence of lawyers to bankroll cases, sometimes costing millions of dollars. Restrictions on legal aid and a decision last fall by the Conservative government to kill the Court Challenges Program, which helped fund individuals and citizen groups fighting for constitutional protections, have made the Charter more inaccessible than ever.
Tags: rights
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Loss of researchers especially worrying, storefront lawyers say
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Feb 18 2010.
Legal Aid Ontario’s financial picture has shifted from a surplus of $29 million three years ago, mainly because money from one of its primary funding sources, the Law Foundation of Ontario, is drying up.
The foundation administers interest from lawyers’ trust accounts. Usually, it provides about 15 per cent of legal aid’s funding (just over $50 million a year). With markets struggling and interest rates hitting lows, it has less money to distribute.
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
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