RSS FeedB.C. introduces law blasted by critics as means to hide homeless for Games
B.C. introduces law blasted by critics as means to hide homeless for Games
The B.C. government introduced a controversial law Thursday that will allow police to take homeless people to shelters in extreme weather, but won’t give officers the power to force them to stay.
[...]
A draft version of the law leaked earlier this fall revealed the government was considering allowing police to take the homeless to local jails, but that has been dropped.[Housing and Social Development Minister] Coleman said he expects the law could be the subject of a court challenge.
It will be the first of its kind in Canada.
Despite Coleman’s assurances that homeless people have the right to refuse entry to a shelter, the proposed law could backfire and result in the homeless hiding from police in extreme weather, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said.
Anti-Anti-Olympic Bylaw in BC Unconstitutional?
The CBC reports: Anti-Olympic signs could mean jail: rights group (Oct 9):
A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice, civil libertarians say.
Violators could be fined up to $10,000 a day and jailed up to six months, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Friday.
The BC Civil Liberties Association has launched a court challenge:
Earlier this week, the association helped two anti-Olympics activists launch a legal challenge of Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics bylaw in B.C. Supreme Court, claiming it was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.
[...]
The association is suspicious of the timing of the provincial bill’s introduction so close to the Olympic games, which have been planned for years.
“We’ve seen them timing things so that they don’t put in place laws that are special to the Olympics until the last minute,” Holmes said. “And part of that leads to the suspicion that they’ve done it in a calculated and deliberate way, to remove the ability of the courts, and people who might want to take it to court, to have their rights protected.”
The BCCLA has their statement of claim up on their website:
“Going to Court on a clear-cut free expression issue is a waste of time and money,” said Westergard-Thorpe. “We’ve all got better things to do, but if the City insists on passing bad bylaws, people who value free speech have no choice but to stand up and challenge them.”
Canada’s First Fourth-Tier Law School?
As most of Canada’s larger universities now have affiliated faculties of law, it falls to younger and smaller universities to adopt legal education. Recently, Lakehead University was unsuccessful in convincing Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty that it would be prudent to establish a law school there, although this rebuff will not likely dash its long-term hopes.
Along these lines, yesterday’s Speech from the Throne by BC Premier Gordon Campbell, a Liberal, contained an interesting tidbit: “A new law school will be opened at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops in collaboration with the University of Calgary.”
Thompson Rivers University?
Thompson Rivers is a small institution (less than 10,000 students) which until 1995 was known as “Caribou College” and did not even become a full university until 2004. In response to the BC Throne Speech, one journalist questioned why the government would mandate a law program at Thompson Rivers, in association with “a kooky, right-wing Alberta university,” when Simon Fraser University would have been a much more appropriate choice.
That raises a good point. Canada’s club of law-degree-granting universities is fairly small, with only 20 schools featuring full-fledged legal programs. All of these institutions are historically established or far larger than Thompson Rivers, or both. It is arguable that these institutions are thus able to provide strong facilities and cross-disciplinary education, as well as the less tangible advantage of proximity with a large knowledge-based social milieu. The minuscule Thompson Rivers, on the other hand, “in the longer term… will seek to develop dedicated space for the TRU Law School.”
The title of this post may come across as institutional snobbery, but this is not true. Rather, it seeks to draw attention to the question of whether Canadian legal education should move toward the situation in the US, where an abundance of no-name backwoods law schools saturate the market with marginally-educated lawyers. It would have made far more sense to create a law school at Simon Fraser University, which would be sizable (and reputable) enough to sustain a unique legal program without having to rest on the intellectual capital of another institution.
Update on the B.C. Mystery Feet
We’ve been following the severed foot story at Law is Cool for some time now. Ian MacKenzie, a freelance new media producer from Vancouver, contacted us to let us know that he’s been doing some independent journalism on the topic as well. His video, including some interesting interviews with RCMP and B.C. Coroner’s Service spokespeople, is embedded below.
If you haven’t heard about it yet, the story is that over the past 18 months, 6 severed feet have washed ashore on BC’s coast. The story has achieved international notoriety, as investigators on both sides of the border have no idea where the feet came from.
DNA analysis has revealed Foot #3 and Foot #5 came from the same person (though the body has never been found). Also, one foot has been connected to a known missing person, and another has been identified as coming from a female. As for the rest of the mystery, answers continue to elude police.
Thanks Ian!
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