TORONTO, Sept. 2, 2020 − Access to justice is one of the most basic rights of democratic citizenship. However, over the past decade, there has been a growing consensus that in many parts of Canada’s justice system, unmet legal needs are at a crisis point. According to new research:

• Canadians spend just under $8 billion annually on their everyday legal problems – on average about $6,000 per problem – and likely much more. By comparison, this is about 75 per cent of what households spend on food each year, half of what they pay for transportation, and a third of what they spend on housing.
• Canada ranks around the middle of sample comparison countries regarding some aspects of justice (e.g. access to laws and legal information), but lower than average when it comes to affordable justice or the efficiency of civil justice.
• Less than seven per cent of people use courts to resolve their problems and less than 20 per cent get legal advice.
• Access to justice costs and barriers are higher and more complex for domestic violence survivors.
• Some access to justice reforms designed to assist lower-income users may not be working the way policy makers intended, according to one landlord-tenant study.
• Within Indigenous communities, the justice system has retraumatized and revictimized some claimants, particularly in the context of the residential schools litigation.

These are just some of the findings and conclusions included in a new collection of research from 24 Canadian and U.S. scholars – The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law – edited by York University Professors Trevor C.W. Farrow and Lesley A. Jacobs. It is the first book to provide an in-depth overview based on new empirical research of what is working and not working to improve access to civil and family justice in Canada.

The Justice Crisis is part of the Cost of Justice project, a seven-year $1-million project of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, located at Osgoode Hall Law School. The Cost of Justice project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

“Having access to justice primarily means having available options to prevent, address and resolve the legal problems and challenges that people face in their daily lives. This requires more than traditional courts and lawyers. Of course those are important. But we also need to properly recognize and support other legal services and initiatives, such as public legal education, alternative dispute settlement, paralegals, innovation in regulation, robust legal aid, and others,” said Farrow, principal investigator on the Cost of Justice project and a Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.

“There are significant knowledge gaps, disconnects and insufficiencies when analyzing peoples’ legal needs, what they do about their legal problems, and government spending on justice,” adds Jacobs, a professor who holds the York Research Chair in Human Rights and Access to Justice. “Our particular focus is on reporting groundbreaking empirical research that address two main research questions: what does it cost to deliver an effective civil justice system, and what does it cost – economically and socially – if we fail to do so. Our findings are important because they enable us to identify what paths to justice are working best for people in meeting their legal needs and resolving their problems.”

Focusing on reducing lawyer fees is not the answer to solving the access to justice crisis. Rather, a full culture shift is needed, with foundational reforms, if access to justice is to be improved, the research shows. Social enterprise and social innovation initiatives – including justice innovation hubs, NGO initiatives, justice information centres, and public/private collaborations – can provide new ways to address access to justice barriers.

The research also concludes that although liberalizing the market for legal services may assist with some aspects of accessibility, maintaining some form of self-regulation of the legal profession continues to be important to protect the justice system from unwarranted intrusions from problematic state actors.

Other important issues and themes canvassed by the research include the role and importance of public funding, self-help assistance in family law, litigation risk and cost assessments, and the disproportionate social impact of unmet legal needs on certain vulnerable populations including Indigenous communities

The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law is edited by Trevor C.W. Farrow, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School and Chair, Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, and Lesley A. Jacobs, FRSC, Vice-President, Research and Innovation, Ontario Tech University, and a Professor and York Research Chair in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University. For more information on The Justice Crisis, please visit UBC Press.

View release online here.

Contact information: 

Trevor C.W. Farrow 

TFarrow@osgoode.yorku.ca

Lesley A. Jacobs 

Jacobs@yorku.ca

Les.Jacobs@ontariotechu.ca

Janice Walls 

Media Relations, York University
wallsj@yorku.ca, 416 455 4710

 

 

 

TORONTO, August, 11, 2020 – The Investor Protection Clinic (IPC) at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School – the first clinic of its kind in Canada – has entered into a partnership with the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) in a joint effort to meet a critical need in the community for free legal services for vulnerable, harmed retail investors.

IIROC is the pan-Canadian self-regulatory organization that oversees all investment dealers and their trading activity in Canada’s debt and equity markets. IIROC will provide the IPC with major funding annually for the next five years to allow the Clinic to continue to create value through file work and investor education.

“Support from generous partners such as IIROC is absolutely critical to the Osgoode Investor Protection Clinic’s success,” said Professor Poonam Puri, Founding Director of the Clinic, which provides free legal advice to people who believe their investments were mishandled and who cannot afford a lawyer.

“Our partners help to ensure that the Clinic is able to provide professional and effective services to harmed investors. Without IIROC and our other partners, we would not be able to provide much-needed legal services to vulnerable retail investors.”

“IIROC has referred investors to the Clinic since it was first established, so we are pleased to take the important next step of sponsorship,” said Doug Harris, IIROC’s Vice-President and General Counsel. “This strengthens our commitment to help the Clinic provide critical, free access to legal services for investors.”

The IPC is a game changer in the retail investment landscape. Since launching in 2016 with seed funding from the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Clinic has recorded numerous wins for clients. Clinic cases have ranged from seniors who have lost their entire retirement savings, to people who have been swindled by trusted members of their community and people who have had their investments mishandled by advisors.

The Clinic is staffed with Osgoode students who are paired with supervising lawyers from law firms in Ontario. “Vulnerable retail investors need help in navigating a complicated legal system,” Puri said. “Our students, under the supervision of some of the finest lawyers in Canada, are able to provide legal assistance while, at the same time, learning core legal skills and connecting real people with theoretical concepts. We are so grateful for our collaboration with these supervising law firms and lawyers.”

For more information about the Investor Protection Clinic, visit its website. The Clinic’s 2020 Annual Report can also be found here.

-30-

About Osgoode Hall Law School
Osgoode Hall Law School of York University has a proud history of 131 years of leadership and innovation in legal education and legal scholarship. A total of about 900 students are enrolled in Osgoode’s three-year Juris Doctor (JD) Program as well as joint and combined programs. The school’s highly selective Graduate Program in Law is also one of the finest in the country and one of the most highly regarded in North America. In addition, Osgoode Professional Development, which operates out of Osgoode’s facility in downtown Toronto, offers both degree and non-degree programming for Canadian and international lawyers, non-law professionals, firms and organizations. Osgoode has an internationally renowned faculty of almost 60 full-time professors, and more than 100 adjunct professors. Our respected community of more than 18,000 alumni are leaders in the legal profession and in many other fields in Canada and across the globe.

About York University

York University is known for championing new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-discipline programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. York students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world’s most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. York U is an internationally recognized research university – our 11 faculties and 26 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. Located in Toronto, York is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni. York U’s fully bilingual Glendon campus is home to Southern Ontario’s Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education.

About the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC)

IIROC is the pan-Canadian self-regulatory organization that oversees all investment dealers and their trading activity in Canada’s debt and equity markets. IIROC sets high quality regulatory and investment industry standards, protects investors and strengthens market integrity while supporting healthy Canadian capital markets. IIROC carries out its regulatory responsibilities through setting and enforcing rules regarding the proficiency, business and financial conduct of 175 Canadian investment dealer firms and their nearly 30,000 registered employees, the majority of whom are commonly referred to as investment advisors. IIROC also sets and enforces market integrity rules regarding trading activity on Canadian debt and equity marketplaces.

Media Contacts:

Virginia Corner, Communications Manager, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, 416-736-5820, vcorner@osgoode.yorku.ca

Gloria Suhasini, York University Media Relations, 416-736-2100 ext. 22094, suhasini@yorku.ca

Andrea Zviedris, Manager, Media and Public Affairs, IIROC, 416-943-6906, azviedris@iiroc.ca

TORONTO, July 14, 2020 – A new tax blog at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University promises to be an interesting, inspiring, provocative and thoughtful forum for tax conversation on topical fiscal and tax issues in Canada and around the world.

The “Tax at Osgoode Hall Law School” blog will feature regular contributions from Osgoode faculty members particularly those in the law school’s robust tax program, academics from other institutions, practitioners of various kinds, and others who are established in the field.

In addition, the blog will also actively encourage contributions from students, especially those in the LLM Tax program.

“This blog is for all students – students in the most expansive sense not just those enrolled in Osgoode’s academic programs but certainly including our own students who think about fiscal and tax matters, often more expansively than others, and who understand the importance of those matters in identifying and enabling constructive responses to any social and economic policy goals,” said J. Scott Wilkie, Distinguished Professor of Practice at Osgoode, one of the most high-profile tax practitioners in Canada, and principal curator of the blog.

Unlike blogs that are the exclusive dominion of their curators who publish short essays or commentaries about their own views, or blogs that simply link to the work of others, the “Tax at Osgoode Hall Law School” blog intends to be different in that its emphasis will be on conversation, Wilkie said.

“Contributors should not be self-conscious about either the scope or length of their comments. Not only are all contributions welcome but they need only be a sentence or a few. It is a conversation, and conversations are not orchestrated or scripted, they simply happen as interested and interesting interlocutors share ideas and experience. This is our hope for this blog.”

The blog was first conceived a few years ago by Osgoode tax law professors Jinyan Li, now Co-Director with Wilkie of the Professional LLM in Tax Law program, and Lisa Philipps, now Provost and Vice-President Academic of York University.

Li credits Wilkie and summer research assistant, JD student Corey LeBlanc, with bringing the “Tax at Osgoode Hall Law School” blog to fruition. “I’m deeply grateful to Professor Wilkie and Corey for giving life to the idea of a tax blog at Osgoode,” Li said.  “The timing is particularly significant as we all crave having meaningful conversations about tax and its impact on life during social distancing.”

Wilkie agrees that the present experience of governments around the world and of supranational organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development with respect to COVID-19 “is possibly the clearest, most immediate and most easily understandable indication of how important fiscal and tax policy are, and further, as are the legislative and administrative ways to activate it, with both humanitarian and structural economic and regulatory considerations front of mind.”

Contributions to the “Tax at Osgoode Hall Law School” blog are welcome from academics, practitioners and law students. Generally, the type of contribution the blog is looking for is commentary on, or reaction to, a case, decision, news story, or legal development with respect to tax law.

The “Tax at Osgoode Hall Law School” blog can be found here: https://tax.osgoode.yorku.ca/

-30-

About Osgoode Hall Law School
Osgoode Hall Law School of York University has a proud history of 131 years of leadership and innovation in legal education and legal scholarship. A total of about 900 students are enrolled in Osgoode’s three-year Juris Doctor (JD) Program as well as joint and combined programs. The school’s highly selective Graduate Program in Law is also one of the finest in the country and one of the most highly regarded in North America. In addition, Osgoode Professional Development, which operates out of Osgoode’s facility in downtown Toronto, offers both degree and non-degree programming for Canadian and international lawyers, non-law professionals, firms and organizations. Osgoode has an internationally renowned faculty of 60 full-time professors, and more than 100 adjunct professors. Our respected community of more than 18,000 alumni are leaders in the legal profession and in many other fields in Canada and across the globe.

About York University

York University is known for championing new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-discipline programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. York students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world’s most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. York U is an internationally recognized research university – our 11 faculties and 26 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. Located in Toronto, York is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni. York U’s fully bilingual Glendon campus is home to Southern Ontario’s Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education.

 

Media Contacts:

Virginia Corner, Communications Manager, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, 416-736-5820, vcorner@osgoode.yorku.ca

Gloria Suhasini, York University Media Relations, 416-736-2100 ext. 22094, suhasini@yorku.ca

Research paper looks at the potential benefits and limitations of using contact tracing apps

TORONTO, June 4, 2020 – As long as contact tracing apps are carefully constructed and the information they reveal is appropriately safeguarded, such apps may, in conjunction with actual human tracing, have a role to play in the country’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, says a team of experts from York University, the University of Toronto and Ontario Tech University.

In a research paper entitled “Test, Trace, and Isolate: COVID-19 and the Canadian Constitution,” the seven authors consider the potential benefits and limitations of using contact tracing apps to identify people who have been exposed to COVID-19. They look at the privacy implications of different app design choices, and how those privacy impacts could be evaluated under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides a framework for balancing competing rights and interests.

“We know that contact tracing is essential to controlling infectious disease and has a central role to play in determining when we can safely loosen COVID-19 physical distancing measures and reopen the economy,” said Professor François Tanguay-Renaud of York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School.

“Before the country goes further down the digital contact tracing road, we wanted to look at several issues surrounding the use of contact tracing apps including how to integrate such apps and human contact tracing; possible infringement of privacy rights; and the need to balance various Charter rights and values.”

Tanguay-Renaud wrote the paper with Lisa M. Austin, Vincent Chiao and Martha Shaffer, University of Toronto Faculty of Law; Beth Coleman, University of Toronto, ICCIT/Faculty of Information; David Lie, University of Toronto, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Andrea Slane, Ontario Tech University, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities.

The authors had an extensive hour-long briefing (via Zoom) with federal Justice Minister David Lametti last Friday. “I must say that he was very receptive and liked many aspects of our paper. In particular, the need to take seriously into account the effectiveness of any app in tracing contacts with COVID cases, when assessing the necessity and proportionality of any infringement of Charter-protected interests, such as privacy, that such apps would likely involve,” Tanguay-Renaud said.

The paper makes three major observations about the efficacy of contact tracing apps:

Improving the efficiency of human contact tracing

The public health goal of a contact tracing app should be to integrate with human contact tracing and make it more efficient rather than replace it, the paper notes. “We need to keep humans in the loop to ensure accuracy and to maintain the important social functions of contact tracing, which includes educating people about risks and helping them access social supports.”

Privacy choices

The paper points out that currently the most privacy-protective design for contact tracing apps makes use of proximity data (via Bluetooth) through a decentralized design, and that this method is receiving significant technical support from Apple and Google.

“However, this method fails to integrate with the human contact tracing system. Other options, such as the use of location logs or a centralized registration system, are more aligned with the public health goal of integration with human contact tracing but raise additional privacy questions.” What’s more, Google and Apple “prohibit app developers both from utilizing centralized methods and from utilizing location data.”

Constitutional balancing

Our privacy commissioners have discussed the need to assess these privacy choices according to the principles of necessity and proportionality, the paper notes. “The Canadian Charter requires that we choose the most privacy-protective app design that meets the public health goal, so long as the benefits of meeting this goal outweigh its deleterious effects on privacy. This requires a reasonable belief in the efficacy of such an app. It also requires an assessment of the nature of the benefits, which are not just the economic benefits of reopening the economy.”

Current restrictions on movement and work are themselves limitations of basic rights and liberties, the paper maintains. Individuals who self-isolate in situations of poverty, precarious housing, mental health challenges, abusive relationships, or other vulnerabilities face challenges that affect their security of the person. There are also broader effects on equality and human flourishing. “If contact tracing, enhanced by an app, reduces the need for restrictions in the form of self-isolation, it promotes other Charter rights and values (for example, security of the person), which must be balanced against the potential infringement of privacy rights.”

An electronic copy of the paper is available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3608823

About Osgoode Hall Law School

Osgoode Hall Law School of York University has a proud history of 131 years of leadership and innovation in legal education and legal scholarship. A total of about 900 students are enrolled in Osgoode’s three-year Juris Doctor (JD) Program as well as joint and combined programs. The school’s highly selective Graduate Program in Law is also one of the finest in the country and one of the most highly regarded in North America. In addition, Osgoode Professional Development, which operates out of Osgoode’s facility in downtown Toronto, offers both degree and non-degree programming for Canadian and international lawyers, non-law professionals, firms and organizations. Osgoode has an internationally renowned faculty of 60 full-time professors, and more than 100 adjunct professors. Our respected community of more than 18,000 alumni are leaders in the legal profession and in many other fields in Canada and across the globe.

About York University

York University is known for championing new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-discipline programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. York students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world’s most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. York U is an internationally recognized research university – our 11 faculties and 26 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. Located in Toronto, York is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni. York U’s fully bilingual Glendon campus is home to Southern Ontario’s Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education.

Media Contacts:

Virginia Corner, Communications Manager, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, 416-736-5820, vcorner@osgoode.yorku.ca

Gloria Suhasini, York University Media Relations, 416-736-2100 ext. 22094, suhasini@yorku.ca