CBC and Copyright
Scott Tribe pointed out on his blog today that the CBC has implemented new copyright policies on its online news properties. As boingboing explains, the CBC has signed up with iCopyright, an American service which…
Articles by Devin Johnston
With Parliament Suspended, Harper Proceeds with Secretive Treaty Negotiations
I’m very glad to see that the NDP is taking notice of the Harper government’s participation in the ongoing Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty Agreement (ACTA) negotiations. Despite a lack of transparency and public consultation, some controversial details…
Pay Equity: Did the Ignatieff Liberals Vote Against “a basic human right”?
Yesterday, Michael Ignatieff stated that pay equity is “a basic human right” and blasted the Conservatives who “[…] very clearly used their 2009 budget to impose their ideological opposition to pay equity for Canadian women.”…
Podcast: UWO Arrest and Campus Police Use of Force (Episode 24)
[display_podcast] In October of this year, Irnes Zeljkovic was arrested at the University of Western Ontario by the UWO Campus Police. The arrest was caught on tape by at least two bystanders, who posted videos…
Does Government Health Spending Hurt the Economy?
The short answer is no (this is even more apparent if you look at the logarithmic scale on Gap Minder). In fact, high government spending on health care per capita (purchasing power parity adjusted) is…
RCMP Takes Heat for Failing to Probe Wire-Tapping Allegations
Last November, MP John Duncan (CON – Vancouver Island North) was accused by the NDP of illegal wire-tapping, contrary to the Criminal Code of Canada, s. 184(1). New Democrats alleged that Duncan, whose parliamentary email…
Should the Governor General be Our Head of State?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper rebuked Governor General Michaëlle today after the Governor General referred to herself as Canada’s head of state at an executive meeting of UNESCO in France. He is correct: Canada’s head of…
Mandatory Disclosure of Product Placements?
Today, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued new guidelines for bloggers who accept payment or free merchandise in exchange for product reviews. The new guidelines will require bloggers to disclose any material connections with…
Are we Legally Required to Have an Election on October 19?
One of Stephen Harper’s first acts as Prime Minister was to enact Bill C-16, An Act to Amend the Canada Elections Act, which purported to establish the principle of fixed election dates in federal law….
Access to Legal Services: Lessons from the Medical Profession (Part 3 of 3)
This is the final instalment of a three-part series on access to legal services. In Part 1, I argued that the crisis facing access to legal services is precipitated by a fundamental mismatch between supply…
Access to Legal Services: Lessons from the Medical Profession (Part 2 of 3)
This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the topic of access to legal services. In Part 1, I argued that the traditional approach to ensuring access to legal services (that is, increasing the…
Access to Legal Services: Lessons from the Medical Profession (Part 1 of 3)
In this three-part series, I make the case that the legal profession needs nurses. More to the point, we need to create new categories of legal professionals who are not lawyer, but who are qualified to provided limited legal advice and even representation within a well-defined scope. These non-lawyer professionals would be regulated by a system similar to that of colleges or associations of nurses in the health industry. In Part 1 of the series, I explore the shortcomings of the “traditional” approach to promoting access to legal services (that is, increasing the capacity of legal aid and pro bono). I argue that these approaches are cost-prohibitive from a government viewpoint and will therefore prove inadequate in addressing the underlying shortage of lawyers.