This course provides an introduction to legal regimes governing collective employee representation in Ontario and beyond. Students will gain appreciation for collective bargaining legislation and its particular scope and parameters of protection. Consideration will be given to the role of the state in protecting freedom of association through statutory certification procedures, the articulation of exclusive bargaining rights and the duty to bargain in good faith. Students will confront the underlying commitments of states in governing collective employee representation, how the Canadian model compares to other systems abroad, the influence of international labour law on collective bargaining regimes, and the deficiencies of existing regulations. Moreover, considerable attention will be given to the increasing impact of technology in workplaces, its challenges to existing regulations, and how collective labour rights represent a vital instrument to govern technological issues at work.
Course or Seminar Category: Regulatory Law
Administrative Law
Administrative law is the body of law that governs public decision-making. It aims to ensure that all public authorities use their powers legally, reasonably, and fairly.
This course will be both theoretically rigorous and highly practical. We will study a set of foundational administrative law concepts (grants of authority, the limits of discretion, the duty of procedural fairness, the right to an unbiased decision maker, standards of review, and public law remedies) as well as their real-world applications including in the courtroom.
Each of the four Adjunct Professors maintains a broad public law practice. As such, case studies will include ministerial decisions, public inquiries, various administrative tribunals, municipal council decisions, environmental assessments, copyright rate-setting, supply management matters, indigenous elections, and parliamentary proceedings.
Animals and the Law
This course analyzes the legal treatment of nonhuman animals, interrogating the limits of
the prevailing property concept that treats them as objects when they are also sentient
subjects with some legal rights. Topics explored include emerging alternatives to the
persons vs property debate; federal anti-cruelty protections and provincial welfare
legislation in Canada; and Indigenous laws and perspectives on nonhuman animals.