Update:Quebec Enviromental Law

« Recension annuelle de la jurisprudence en droit de l’environnement (2010) »
17 mai 2011
Bureaux de l’ABC-Québec
500, Place d’Armes, bureau 1935
Montréal, QC
De 12 h 00 à 14 h 00 EN110517Section : Environment, Energy and Natural Resources
Chair : M e Mira Gauvin

Speaker:
Jean Piette, Ogilvy Renault

Subject:
Several decisions have been made since January 2010 on environmental law. Jean Piette, senior partner at Ogilvy Renault (Norton Rose soon) will discuss recent decisions the most significant trends they suggest, and rules that can be identified.

Albie Sachs: "It has been a wonderful life. When I put all the things together, I can hardly believe it..." - Peter Bills, Columnists - The Independent

Albie Sachs: "It has been a wonderful life. When I put all the things together, I can hardly believe it..." - Peter Bills, Columnists - The IndependentYet life has continued to fascinate and intrigue Albie Sachs, then and now. To have been appointed to the newly established Constitutional Court and to help with the development of the Constitutional building in Johannesburg and its art collection besides its vision, was marvellous. Then, on a personal level, to have found love again (he was married before and had two sons) late in life with Vanessa, a relationship that has produced an adored son, Oliver, perhaps proves the biblical saying "God moves in mysterious ways".

"We were together for ten years before marrying and to become a father again in my early 70s, was extraordinary, a delight. Meeting Vanessa gave a huge élan to living; sharing things, having fun?.just the details of every day life. We have travelled all over the world together and she is a marvellous, generous spirit with a quick mind and great sense of fun. We have been together now for 15 years and it has been such a happy time. It is an absolute bonus having a young son again. My friends are having grandchildren but I can tell you, it is much more fun to have a child at this age.

"It has been a succession of wonderful, improbable yet very real episodes. Yet I don’t buy the religious thing; I don’t feel there is a guiding hand behind me. I am very respectful of the religious beliefs of others but personally I have never felt that.

"In the deep struggle days I couldn’t marry someone that hadn’t been in solitary confinement. It was such a profound existence, I couldn’t share my life with someone that hadn’t known it. But after the achievement of democracy I felt somehow free from that need.

"I feel that we have achieved what I call my soft vengeance. It is much more beautiful than ordinary punishment. It is a huge transformation of our country that validates everything we went through."

Albie Sachs, who studied at the University of Cape Town, has written many books on human rights. His calm, philosophical demeanour enabled him to meet the person who organised the placing of the bomb in his car 20 years ago. They came face to face years later, assailant and his victim; two men from diametrically opposed philosophies brought together by unique circumstances. Sachs called him "an instrument of his side" and the security official proffered

Premier Charest unveils plan to develop Quebec's North

Premier Charest unveils plan to develop Quebec's North

LÉVIS – Premier Jean Charest announced Monday that his long-awaited Plan Nord, to open northern Quebec to economic and social development, will mean private and public investments totalling $80 billion over 25 years.

“The Plan Nord will be for the coming decades what the Manicouagan and James Bay developments were in the 1960s and '70s,” Charest said.

Investments in energy development, mining, forestry, transportation and tourism in the 1.2 million square kilometre region – twice the size of France – arev expected to create 20,000 jobs a year, on average, in the region, generating economic growth of $162 billion, tax revenues of $14 billion and mining royalties of $1.4 billion in five years, he said.

Only 120,000 people live in that vast territory, including 10,000 Inuit, 16,000 Crees, 9,300 of Quebec’s 16,000 Innu and 1,000 Naskapi in 31 communities, as well non-aboriginals in 32 communities.

Quebec is breaking the 25-year plan into five-year chunks, with $2.1 billion in public money budgeted for the first phase, 2011 to 2016



Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Premier+Charest+unveils+plan+develop+Quebec+North/4747772/story.html#ixzz1LsxmC8vh

Harper could shape the Supreme Court for decades - CTV News

CTV Calgary- Harper could shape the Supreme Court for decades - CTV News

Angela Mulholland, CTV.ca News Staff

The Supreme Court of Canada is about to transform, as half its membership retires and is replaced. But few Canadians seem interested, even though the Court could well be one of the strongest influences on our everyday lives, notes the author of a new book.

Because of mandatory retirement at age 75, four of the Supreme Court's nine justices will be retiring within the next four years; others may choose to step down as well.

This gives Prime Minister Stephen Harper the chance to "stamp his own image on the Court" with his picks for replacements -- on top of the two justices he's already appointed, says Philip Slayton, a former law professor and author of "Mighty Judgment: How the Supreme Court of Canada Runs Your Life."

Bev Mac was appointed by Mulroney...; Justice Provincial Cameron by NDP after doing a stint in Australian Courts...In house counsel for Patterson Foods is a former weight lifter.Gontier was a Mulroney appointement; Gagnon was a Nichelson appointment;..."It is plain to see,the change has come- he is under my thumb!" i.e. the state of the CBA in Canada.

Does the City of Winnipeg have a noise by-law?

According to the court, the words of s. 9(1) of the city(Montreal) bylaw are ambiguous, in that the words used are very general; the judges asked: “what exactly is 'noise'? Is it a sound that could disturb the public peace, or is it any sound that can be imagined? What does 'can be heard from the outside' mean? Is a connection with the building necessary, or would a cellular phone constitute sound equipment? The general language used by the lawmakers can be interpreted in many ways.”

According to the majority, given its ambiguous nature, the provision required interpretation. According to the court, in interpreting the provision, one must look not only at the words of the legislation, but also its context

Town Hall, May 2008

Town Hall, May 2008
City of Montreal v. 2952-1366 Quebec Inc.: the Supreme Court reaffirms the use of general language in environmental statutes
By Charles Kazaz
Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, Montreal and Toronto

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As many readers are aware, environmental legislation often contains prohibitions that are drafted in very general terms. For example, most, if not all, provincial environmental statutes contain a provision along the lines that “no one may discharge a contaminant into the environment that causes or is likely to cause an adverse effect.” In the early 1990s, there was significant debate as to whether such a broad prohibition is valid, given that it is drafted in terms that may be too vague to be applicable, and was therefore void for vagueness under administrative or constitutional law principles. In a nutshell, the argument went that because of its general nature, the prohibition was overbroad, such that those subject to the legislation could not properly distinguish between prohibited and permitted acts.

In 1995, the Supreme Court of Canada, in Ontario v. Canadian Pacific Ltd. [1995] 2 S.C.R. 1031, decided that in the context of environmental legislation, such broadly drafted prohibitions are valid. The majority of the Supreme Court held that in the context of environmental legislation, a strict requirement of drafting precision might undermine the ability of the legislature to provide a comprehensive and flexible regime.

Now, ten years later, the issue has resurfaced before the Supreme Court in City of Montreal v. 2952-1366 Quebec Inc., 2005 S.C.R. 62. In the case, a club owner placed loudspeakers outside a club that amplified music so that passersby on St. Catherine Street could hear the music. The club was charged under s.9(1) of the city’s noise by-law, which provides: “ … where they can be heard from outside, are specifically prohibited noise produced by sound equipment whether it is inside a building or installed or used outside

Ontario decision ,O'Connor ,Security Certificates

After spending more than two years examining Arar’s story, the sober Associate Chief Justice of Ontario issued a blunt and damning verdict: Arar was an innocent victim of incompetent rcmp officers who produced worthless intelligence. O’Connor also concluded that a smear campaign had been orchestrated against Arar by Canadian officials, aided by members of the media. Leaks to the press spanned two years and constituted a campaign with the intent, O’Connor stated, not only to tar Arar’s name and reputation but also to keep him imprisoned. When that ultimately failed, the goal was to thwart a public inquiry.

Though it has received scant attention, a twenty-two-page section of O’Connor’s encyclopedic report stands as an indictment of the reporters who participated in labelling Arar a terrorist and a habitual liar. “The impact on an individual’s reputation of being called a terrorist in the national media is obviously severe . . . labels, even inaccurate ones, have a tendency to stick,” wrote O’Connor.

On September 28, 2006, none other than rcmp Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli confirmed the key findings of Justice O’Connor’s report when he admitted to a parliamentary committee that he knew within days of Arar’s arrest that the software engineer was not a terrorist; Zaccardelli also confessed that he had kept that fact a secret. “You let him rot for almost a year in Syrian prisons,” Bloc Québécois MP Serge Ménard told Zaccardelli. “For most Canadians, before the O’Connor commission report, Mr. Arar was linked to terrorists, and you knew it was false. How, as a policeman, could you leave someone that you know is innocent in prison?”