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"In Canada since 1875, courts have been permitted to act as advisors alongside their ordinary, adjudicative role. This book offers the first detailed examination of that role from a legal perspective. When one thinks of courts, it is most often in the context of deciding cases: live disputes involving spirited, adversarial debate between opposing parties. Sometimes, though, a court is granted the power to answer questions in the absence of cases through a reference or advisory opinions. These proceedings raise many questions: about the judicial role, about the relationship between courts and those who seek their "advice", and about the nature of law. Tracking their use in Canada since the country's Confederation and looking to the experience in other legal systems, this book considers how reference opinions draw courts into the complex relationship between law and politics. Focusing on key themes such as the separation of powers, federalism, rights and precedent, this book provides an important and timely study of a fascinating phenomenon"-- Provided by publisher

The Canadian environmental assessment (EA) regime is broken. At a time when the Canadian economy is both increasingly sluggish and unsustainable, we have an obligation -- and perhaps a once-in-a-generation opportunity -- to fundamentally reform EA to enable it to finally live up to its promise of promoting sound and sustainability-based decisions. This task is even more pressing in light of the global commitment under the Paris Climate Change Agreement to rapidly transition to greenhouse gas emissions neutrality. Among the many priorities of meaningful EA reform -- moving beyond project-level assessments, focusing on net positive contributions to sustainability, avoiding costly trade-offs among interdependent economic, ecological, and social objectives -- we focus on the overarching need for polyjural collaboration and polycentric consensus-based decision-making. We argue that any serious effort to move from project-level EAs focused exclusively on adverse biophysical impacts towards a fully integrated, sustainability-based assessment (SA) regime requires a polyjural and polycentric approach capable of facilitating collaborative experimentation among multiple jurisdictional actors, including the federal government, provinces, territories, municipalities, Indigenous peoples, NGOs, academia, project proponents and industry groups, and the Canadian public. After examining the constitutional and political dimensions of the federal and provincial governments' role in EA, we provide two compelling rationales for transitioning to a SA regime. The paper concludes by setting out a series of possible forms of SA for the purpose of informing the federal government's review of its EA regime. In particular, we identify and analyze the competing options for jurisdictional cooperation, collaboration, and consensus-based assessment processes along with the constitutional and practical policy implications of each.

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The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012, which came into force on 6 July 2012, virtually eliminates the core of federal-level environmental assessment in Canada. Under the new law, federal environmental assessments will be few, fragmentary, inconsistent and late. Key decision-making will be discretionary and consequently unpredictable. Much of it will be cloaked in secrecy. The residual potential for effective, efficient and fair assessments will depend heavily on requirements under other federal legislation and on the uneven diversity of provincial, territorial and Aboriginal assessment processes. This paper reviews the key characteristics of the new law in light of 10 basic design principles for environmental assessment processes, and considers the broader international implications of the Canadian retreat from application of these principles.

This commentary assesses the key changes to the federal environmental assessment (EA) process contained in the 2012 Budget Implementation Bill. The resulting Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012 (CEAA 2012) is compared to the federal EA process that had been in place since the implementation of the original CEAA in 1995. The article concludes that the key changes brought about by the enactment of CEAA 2012, including the shift in responsibility for EA, the discretionary application of the process, the narrowed scope, new powers of delegation, substitution and equivalency, and the more restricted role of the public all function counter to the improvements to CEAA 1995 recommended in the academic literature. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

"The fifth edition of Environmental Law, is a comprehensive introductory guide to environmental law in Canada which incorporates discussion of recent developments in environmental litigation and regulation alongside reference to key statutory developments from the past half decade. In addition, updating and revisions highlight significant developments in several key areas, notably federal and provincial climate change action following the 2015 Paris Agreement and issues associated with Aboriginal consultation, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and traditional environmental knowledge."-- Provided by publisher.

La restitution en droit civil est à la fois commune et incomprise. Les occasions de l'appliquer sont nombreuses, mais les juges peinent souvent à en suivre méthodiquement les règles. Cet ouvrage est le premier en droit québécois à approfondir le thème de la restitution des prestations, concept émergent en droit des obligations. Geste simple en apparence, le fait de "rendre ce qui a été reçu" soulève en réalité des difficultés importantes liées notamment au passage du temps. L'anéantissement du contrat, la réception de l'indu et l'impossibilité d'exécuter une obligation en raison d'un événement de force majeure ne sont que quelques-uns des cas visés. Cet ouvrage rend compte des fondements et du régime de la restitution en droit québécois. Il explique les dispositions du Code civil du Québec et en éclaire l'application. -- Résumé de l'éditeur

Canadian law sometimes allows gain-based remedies for certain wrongful acts. There is a strong suggestion that gain-based remedies are available in the common law provinces for torts and perhaps breaches of contract, but the courts have been hesitant. Common law provinces have also been willing to award gain-based remedies for breaches of confidence, in the court’s discretion. In the context of infringements of intellectual property rights, which is federal law, the legislation makes clear that gain-based remedies are available, although again this is in the discretion of the court. In both common law and Quebec civil law, in situations where one person is managing the property or affairs of another in a fiduciary capacity, improper gains must be surrendered, although it is arguable that the law ascribes rights acquired by the manager to the principal as the correct legal implementation of the parties’ relationship, rather than as a remedy for wrongdoing.

Child sexual abuse (CSA) often leads to negative outcomes for victims, frequently over the long term. From recent qualitative research and supportive work with survivors there is reason to believe that image and/or online elements to sexual abuse add complexity and challenge to their recovery. This chapter attempts to pull together a picture of the negative impact of online sexual abuse drawing on all of these sources of knowledge. This includes exploration of why online and/or image elements in sexual abuse may worsen or complicate impact; why some children may be more negatively affected than others; how impact may change over time; where critical points of vulnerability may lie; and how emotions, meanings and experiences around online sexual abuse may play into subsequent difficulties. The chapter concludes by drawing out implications for work with children and families and suggesting directions for further research.

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Transcripts of chat logs of naturally occurring, sexually exploitative interactions between offenders and victims that took place via Internet communication platforms were analyzed. The aim of the study was to examine the modus operandi of offenders in such interactions, with particular focus on the specific strategies they use to engage victims, including discursive tactics. We also aimed to ascertain offenders’ underlying motivation and function of engagement in online interactions with children. Five cases, comprising 29 transcripts, were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis with a discursive focus. In addition to this, police reports were reviewed for descriptive and case-specific information. Offenders were men aged between 27 and 52 years (M = 33.6, SD = 5.6), and the number of children they communicated with ranged from one to 12 (M = 4.6, SD = 4.5). Victims were aged between 11 and 15 (M = 13.00, SD = 1.2), and were both female and male. Three offenders committed online sexual offenses, and two offenders committed contact sexual offenses in addition to online sexual offenses. The analysis of transcripts revealed that interactions between offenders and victims were of a highly sexual nature, and that offenders used a range of manipulative strategies to engage victims and achieve their compliance. It appeared that offenders engaged in such interactions for the purpose of sexual arousal and gratification, as well as fantasy fulfillment.

A preparatory process is widely accepted to be a common feature in the perpetration of sexual offenses. Numerous commentators, however, have documented the difficulties in defining and understanding this process, given its transient nature and its specificity to this one form of criminal behavior. This theoretical review aims to provide a universal model of a grooming process for the achievement of illicit or illegal goals in which achievement requires the compliance or submission of another individual—one that can be applied both to the sexual offending process and beyond. First, an evaluation of three process models of grooming is conducted. Second, using a process of theory knitting, an integrated universal model of illicit grooming is developed. This model unites salient elements of the previous models while seeking to address their limitations. It is founded in control theory and self-regulation approaches to behavior, assumes a goal-directed protagonist, and comprises two distinct phases, namely, (1) a potentiality phase of rapport-building, incentivization, disinhibition, and security-management and (2) a disclosure phase in which goal-relevant information is introduced in a systematic and controlled manner in order to desensitize the target. Finally, the theoretical quality of the model is appraised, and its clinical implications are discussed.