CommentaryPrime Minister Stephen Harper campaigned on a promise to lift the publication ban on the identities of young people convicted of serious violent offences. Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act as it now stands, judges consider the impact on society and on the youth before deciding whether the media can name such offenders. In a…
NewsAlberta’s Court of Appeal has overturned a ruling that would have ended the practice of banning publication of evidence heard at bail hearings at the request of a defendant. A lower court said the mandatory ban, which applies even when there will be no jury trial, violated the Charter’s guarantee of press freedom and judges should…
While everyone has a protected right to speak to government, including the right to request information, do citizens (including journalists) have a correlative Charter right to an answer from government? The Supreme Court of Canada will soon grapple with just that question. A CanWest story is here.
CommentaryTwo recent media victories in defamation cases do little to fix an underlying problem: Canada’s libel laws favour protecting reputations over free speech, lawyer and Humber College media law instructor Alan Shanoff argues in an October 2008 column in the Law Times. The law still presumes factual statements published by a defendant are false and, second, expressions…
A Toronto family’s lawsuit against The Globe and Mail and former reporter Jan Wong for invasion of privacy threatens to strengthen Canada’s privacy laws and, writes J-Source law editor Dean Jobb, create new risks for those who impersonate others in pursuit of a story.
CommentaryBritain’s libel laws are outdated and a gift to the censorious and powerful, who use them to silence critics and, increasingly, to try to shut down websites and bloggers. The Internet and the global nature of publishing ensure “these medieval laws have become the most powerful extra-territorial legislation ever drafted.” Author George Monboit, writing in…
CommentaryWhile the Canadian Human Rights Commission has concluded that Mark Steyn’s controversial October 2006 Maclean’s piece was “calculated to excite and even offend certain readers,” the commission ruled that doesn’t make it hate speech. Vancouver Sun columnist Ian Mulgrew says the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal should reject a similar complaint against Maclean’s and, like its…
CommentaryEngland has abolished the ancient common law offence of blasphemous libel, but the crime remains on the books in Canada. Until the offence fell into disuse in the 1920s, anyone who made “contemptuous,” “reviling,” or “scurrilous” statements about God, Jesus Christ or the Church of England could be prosecuted, although Canada’s Criminal Code exempts statements…
News The Supreme Court of Canada has described open courts as a “core value” as central to the justice system as the presumption of innocence. Yet at the trial court level in Ontario, the Ministry of the Attorney General has imposed access restrictions that arguably have made the province’s court system the least open in…
CommentaryNo one disputes that open courts are a hallmark of a democratic society. But media lawyer Alan Shanoff, writing the June 14, 2008 edition of the Law Times, says it’s time to stop paying lip service to this principle and to rethink the many roadblocks the legal system throws in the way of openness.