Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canadian law/Archive 1

Case Law Naming Convention

Great work on the Canadian law materials, Spinboy. Nonetheless, I'd like to discuss the issue of case naming convention. I would like to suggest that we adopt the Uniform Legal Citation style for these types of articles (it's partially described in the court citation article, sourced from the "Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation"). It has been around for about 7 years or so and has since become the de-facto standard for all legal writing. The style is being heavily pushed by the legal community and is likely to become even more prevalent in the future. Indeed, I don't see too much reason to try to reinvent the wheel by designing a new convention, nor would it be wise to apply older standards that are likely to be phased-out. And as for following past practice; the courts, in the past, have not been entirely consistent in style so they are not always a helpful measure to go by.

The part of the style, however, that I think you'll likely find problematic is that reference cases are to be named "Reference Re" and not "Re". I believe the rationale is that "Re" cases generally are used for Will and Estate cases, while the "Reference Re" distinguishes the case as a constitutional reference. It seems reasonable to me and I don't see any harm in following that rule.

In any event, I hope you'll give my suggestion some thought, and perhaps you can provide some input on why you might prefer to keep the style as it is. I think based on the prominence of the Uniform Legal Citation style and the fact that the convention would immediately solve any case naming controveries off the bat makes it tempting option. Cheers! --PullUpYourSocks 03:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I was actually going to ask about this. The Prostitution in Canada (Constitutional and case law) has a stub stating it does not meet wikipedia's ciation standard when in fact it meets the the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation. I will delete the comment. However, we could add more links to the cases. Murmullo (talk) 00:04, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Canadian Encyclopedia

The Canadian Encyclopedia has a significant number of law and legal history articles that would be great to have here. Take a look. [1] --PullUpYourSocks 15:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

{{LawUnref}}

Note - I have created a modification of the {{unreferenced}} template for law articles - {{LawUnref}}, which puts articles into Category:Law-related articles lacking sources. I have substituted this for the regular unref template on some law articles in Category:Articles lacking sources. Please use this as a resource to note law-related articles that require references. Cheers! BD2412 T 15:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Canadian law topics

I've done a bit of work creating stub articles on basic Canadian law topics. My hope is to have articles on all the core areas of law in a Canadian context that exist in parallel with the "canadian sections" found in country-neutral law articles. The idea is that it would be far easier to read a full article on say "Canadian criminal procedure" rather than a bunch of subsections on canada on general criminal procedure topics. However, these Canada-specific articles should only address uniquely Canadian issues in a given field such as the discussing the evolution of the Canadian jurisprudence. They should not "reinvent the wheel" by explaining the very basics principles of the area of law that is present across all common law countries. At this point it's best to aim for breadth over depth so please excuse me if I'm a little sloppy.

Here's the article breakdown, branching out from law of canada, that I'm thinking of at the moment:

• Law of Canada
  • Constitution
    • Charter
  • Court system
    • Supreme Court
    • other courts, etc.
  • Criminal law
    • Criminal procedure
  • Civil law
    • Contract law
    • Tort law
    • etc
  • Procedural law
    • Civil procedure
    • Evidence

It probably needs some fine tuning but it's got decent coverage. --PullUpYourSocks 03:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... one problem you might run into is that Quebec law and civil law in Canada are short enough that some people may question the purpose for their separate existence, and merge, redirect or AfD them. Other than that, carry one, will see how they go. Natural evolution. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 03:39, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's always a concern. But the fact of the matter is, if I wait around until I have the entire article sketched out before I start writing then I'll never get it started! Let's just hope no one catches on until the article fills out. --PullUpYourSocks 04:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

You could try this:

• Canadian Law
  • International Law
  • Domestic Law
    • Substantive Law
      • Public Law
        • Constitutional Law
        • Administrative Law
        • Criminal Law
      • Private Law
        • Tort Law
        • Contract Law
        • Family Law
        • Wills and Estates
        • Property Law
        • Employment Law
    • Procedural Law

Any good? --somody 20:05, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Citing legislation

It just occured to me that in legal writing, when citing a piece of legislation or a constitutional document, the normal citation style is to italicize it. So one would write: the Charter, Constitution Act, 1867, Limitations Act, and so forth. Unless there are any protests to it I think it would be a good practice to follow. -PullUpYourSocks 04:38, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

A citation template desperately needs to be created. It should implement that formatting. Vagary 20:10, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

New

I just joined Wikipedia at the end of December and found this Wikiproject today. I signed up to be involved, I'm wondering what's going on with the project. Thanks. Ardenn 19:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Welcome! Thus far it's still kind of early in improving coverage of Canadian law, but we've made a lot of progress over these past few months. We're mainly working on starting articles in List of Supreme Court of Canada cases and expanding other articles in Category:Canadian law stubs. Some articles will need wikifying or clean up as well. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 01:10, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Ontario Mental Health Act

I recently created this article, I think it would be great if someone could take a look over and offer suggestions for improvement. I think there's still lots to do here and the redlinks indicate more articles that could be created. Thanks Matt 01:10, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

SCC lists

Right now they're still divided with this "pre-Charter"/"post-Charter" thing. The problem is that all the lists post-Charter will still deal with cases that have nothing to do with the Charter. Moreover, the list dealing with the post-Charter era to the end of the Dickson court will cover only 2 years between the adoption of the Charter and the rise of Dickson as Chief Justice, and no Charter cases were considered at that time, although it was mentioned in a prostitution case. I propose we move that list to make it just about Dickson and move the pre-Charter list so it's just a pre-Dickson list. All the odd redirects created as a result can be pointed back to the mother article, List of Supreme Court of Canada cases. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 04:30, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I have to admit, I'm not seeing how the "post-charter" list suggesting that the list contains only charter cases as you seem to suggest, nevertheless, if you see it that way, then I'm sure many otherd will as well, so that's fair criticism. The core reason why I divided cases between pre- and post-charter is that among all the landmark events to demarcate eras in Canadian law, the Charter was by far the biggest. Bigger than a change in Chief Justice, at least. So I felt compelled to preserve the distinction as much as I could. Admittedly I don't like the awkward span of "Charter through Dickson" list, but I felt it was a reasonable trade-off. In all, I'm not too concerned about the two year gap from the enactment of the Charter and actual Charter cases. The first year or two of cases after a change in Chief Justice are not cases heard by the new chief justice either, so the contents of any of the lists never entirely reflect their title. As I said before, I am not entirely grasping the problem, but I'm open to changes if you see it necessary. If you don't think it's worth preserving the Charter as a timeline landmark, I'd be open to just switching to strictly following the "Chief Justice" pattern of dividing the lists. However, rather than call it "pre-Dickson Court" I'd lean towards calling it something along the lines of "Richards Court through Laskin Court". --PullUpYourSocks 02:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that was a bit hasty of me moving them before your response; anyway, while the adoption of the Charter was a major landmark, it's not that the lists are divided between just pre-Charter and post-Charter; the Lamer and McLachlin Courts have their own lists, so it seems natural to me Dickson can have his own list. You're right about the title of the pre-Dickson one, we should change it- right now I've got to be getting to work. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 02:33, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

That's alright. I suspect it would happen sooner or later. It's sad to see the charter division go, but I'll get over it. It's probably for the best in any event. -PullUpYourSocks 02:39, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Request for article

Both Pornography and Censorship in Canada refer to a 2000 Supreme Court case that ruled that Canada Customs did not have the authority to make its own judgments about the permissibility of material being shipped to the stores, but was only permitted to confiscate material that had specifically been ruled by the courts to constitute an offence under the Criminal Code of Canada.

I think it would be interesting and useful to have a detailed article on this case to link too, but I absolutely lack the competence to do such a thing, can the wikipedians of this project help? Circeus 23:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure we have it- Little Sisters. Let me see if I can find it. CanadianCaesar Cæsar is turn’d to hear 00:02, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice) CanadianCaesar Cæsar is turn’d to hear 00:02, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Note the article says the government won- an apparent contradiction with your quote above- but this was because the Court said the law was valid while the bureaucrats were abusing it. CanadianCaesar Cæsar is turn’d to hear 00:06, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch! I'll add the links now. Circeus 03:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

As an afterthought, the article is not very clear on the implications of the decision. It neither confirms nor informs the statement I give above (from Censorship in Canada) Circeus 03:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

LexUM Upgrade

It looks like LexUM, the closest thing to an official source for SCC decisions, has upgraded its interface. Most notably it has changed its URL to match the neutral citation which means that it is possible to make a template to link to them. I've added Template:lexum-scc and template:lexum-scc2 which should be used in the "external links" section of the text. --PullUpYourSocks 23:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Issue with Canadian law Wikiproject stub-logo

Uh, not wanting to rile any badge-wearing contributors, but I do not think that the Mountie logo is appropriate at all for a page about law and justice; and the history of the Mounties is rife with things that are going to have articles where they DON'T represent justice (at the moment I'm thinking of the Fred Quilt case, which I'm going to write the first article for, but there are heaps of others...the proceedings against Bruce Clarke and the Ts'peten Defenders, for instance). I know the Supreme Court doesn't have a very useful logo, but something else should be found that's less partial/political in character. A moose and a beaver on a pair of scales?? - I don't know; but the Mountie bison is a turn-off, especially if you were First Nations or Metis (I'm not).Skookum1 02:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

• And lots of Mounties have died while defending justice. Every institution, like every country, has a few skeletons in their closet. Aboriginals would have bad things to say even about the Supreme Court- have you ever heard of the second Marshall case? CanadianCaesar Cæsar is turn’d to hear 02:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Not to be testy, but a lot of people have died at the hands of the Mounties while defending justice. or just for nothing at all. Not just the conquest of the Metis and the various police abuses of individual First Nations people over the century-and-some of their existence, but also at Regina in 1926 and Winnipeg 1919 and in other confrontations with non-native peoples; or just some kid with a beer bottle who gets shot in the back of the head and there's not even an investigation. I won't start a full list; it's too infamous and in a way too well-known already (if largely ignored in mainstream media, even in alternative media); key cases concerning Mountie conduct are going to be in Wikipedia (the aforementioned Quilt case among them) and to me it's just not right to use their symbol/badge design; as well as the obvious point, if you stop to think about it, that it is potentially offensive to certain groups.
  • And it wasn't my point in the previous post, which WASN'T meant to offend those oh-so-self-sacrificing Mounties; it was to raise the issue of the appropriateness of the logo. NOT, is the point; the mounted police are not the law; they may think they are, but they are not, and hiding behind deaths-while-on-duty is just wrapping themselves in the flag to evade criticism (like any other political organization). No bison; a talking stick if anything, or maybe a Crown; I'll go with Justitias or Veritas, though; scales are maybe TOO generic; scales with a maple leaf, if need be, I suppose....Skookum1 06:29, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
• Indeed, same as the RCMP, Canadian law has a history of sometimes gross injustices. All the same, it's a fair comment. There is no point alienating people unnecessarily, especially here, where there is no compelling reason to use the mountie crest. Law enforcement is peripheral enough that that I don't recall seeing many Canadian law articles touching on it. So it may be worth reconsidering the choice of picture. Finding an alternative may be difficult. There is no "seal" system of identifying departments as there is in the US. The closest thing that represents the courts that I've seen is the Canadian coat of arms, which is used in courts at all levels, that's certainly non-offensive. I would side against something like the blind-folded justice, which I believe is largely an american metaphor, but I think just a generic scale would be fine. For a more creative option, I like the idea of a picture of one of the Veritas or Justitia statues outside the supreme court. -PullUpYourSocks 03:09, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
• I also do not agree with using the RCMP logo. We are not, even if some volunteers are RCM police, representatives of it. How about a pastiche of the Justice Canada crest? Scales of Justice with a maple leaf as the fulcrum? Or a big leaf with the scales inside it? DoctorMud 02:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Just came to me while reading your response: what about a simplified graphic of the Supreme Court building; dull and severe gothic-deco though it is; but it's a fairly recognizable image; more or less.Skookum1 08:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• • Note I've changed it, not really because of the discussion here, but because the RCMP pic was fair use, and thus I believe its use in templates would be discouraged. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 08:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Resources

I noticed you've had some discussion about infoboxes here, I thought I might refer you to some of the templates that we created for the WikiProject Australian law. There's Template:Infobox Court Case (from which I believe the English one is derived, I don't know why they made their own version). It's completely customisable so it can be used for any court, compare say Sue v Hill with Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.. Take a look at the Whatlinkshere page for some examples of usage.

The other major one is Template:Cite Case AU, which generates links to any of about thirty case report series on the AustLII site. A Canadian version could easily be created to generate links to CanLII materials. I've found that it's very useful for maintaining consistency in terms of case citation.

The reason I mention these is that a degree of consistency across the various law related projects on WP might be nice. I'm open to suggestions for improving the templates if anyone can think of new fields that could be added. --bainer (talk) 03:50, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of greater uniformity between the infoboxes but I am not entirely convinced that having a single template for all cases is desirable just yet. I think there is a lot to be gained by experimenting a bit between jurisdictions and I also think that there is some advantage to having templates that are configured for a given country, such as the use of "switches" to select the court membership. Given time, when a single style has proven to be the outright best, perahaps a single template may be in order, but I don't believe it has happened yet. Nevertheless, the templates you link to are helpful for Canadian infoboxes. I'm especially intregued by the "Cite Case" template. -PullUpYourSocks 02:56, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

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Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Truscott appeal

Hi, I just added a paragraph to the Steven Truscott article in regards to todays hearings in the Ontario Court of Appeals, and the presence of cameras in the court for the first time. I was hoping that someone with more expertise could look it over. thanks! Mike McGregor (Can) 16:17, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Alberta law

Hay, I just added a new article to Wikipedia as a link to the Foothills Medical Centre article, Hospitalization Benefits Plan. feel free to edit it, tag it, etc, etc, etc,--John Zdralek 08:51, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki cooperation

I've asked for an "interwiki cooperation". Please read the discussion here. Thanks. Erasoft24 23:59, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

BC Legislature Raids

I think the BC Legislature Raids article could use some expert eyes. Canuckle 22:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

New user

Hello - I'm new here. I've used Wikipedia for ages, but finally got around to signing up to do some article editing. Your work on the SCC page is fantastic! I would be very interested in helping out with this WikiProject, particularly with respect to Manitoba legal issues & the courts (again, particularly in Manitoba). What can I do to help? --MBueckert 19:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome! It's great to have more contributors. Things have been pretty quiet with the Canadian legal articles for the last while so there is nothing specific to let you in on. Anything you can contribute would be helpful so it's up to you. Off the top of my head there is a good number of SCC case summaries that are a quite sloppy and could use work. I'm also thinking about working on more articles on the core Canadian legal topics sometime soon. But as I said, there is no pressure to work one one topic over another. --PullUpYourSocks 22:14, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Assessment table

I set up a v1.0 assessment table for the project. It only has a few articles listed in it now, but it will add more as the bots and job queue catch up. It will include articles tagged with the {{WikiProject Canada}} template using the |canlaw=yes parameter and ones using the {{CanLaw}} template. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:13, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Something seems to be amiss with the Unassessed link. The table indicates there are over 300 unassessed articles, but when I clicked it today Wikipedia told me that there are no such articles. PKT (talk) 17:10, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject Prisons

If anyone's interested, I've proposed a new wikiproject for the creation of articles regarding specific prisons here. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 20:48, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

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Your input sought: Deletion review: Principles of Canadian Income Tax Law

Hi. I came across a new article that was either spam or a copyright violation (it used the word "we" a lot). I tagged it and it was speedy deleted. The author has taken it to deletion review:

• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 July 21#Principles of Canadian Income Tax Law

I think there may be a chance this is a notable book deserving of a totally different article -- can some of you take a look? Thanks! --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Canadian law

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Ages of consent in Canada problem

This was created, but the info is already covered in Ages of consent in North America so I need some opinions/help explaining this to someone with high hopes wanting to basically rewrite what is acquired from scratch. I'm going to appeal to the main body of WikiProject Law about this as well. I'm not sure why there isn't a WikiProject US Law... I thought there was before. Tyciol (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Bill C-2

Related to the above, information regarding this 2005 amendment to the effective age of consent seems to be absent but I definately remember adding it before, I am not sure what happened, possibly it got lost in a move I haven't targetted, if anyone has a clue, like I remember very extensive arguments with somebody about this... pretty sure it was on an article talk page and not a WikiProject though... does anyone remember a huge rant-like debate? Alright, well, I made it so it has its own talk page for the moment if anyone cares, or here is also fine. Now it'll be hard to forget. There are more recent updates to the page and it wasn't removed like I was thinking... I'm pretty scatterbrained, time to get some sleep. Even so, the statements on that page are relevant so screencap them while you can. Tyciol (talk) 08:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

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Gangs in Canada

Article needs proofreading and fact-checking from someone familiar with the subject. It's a magnet for long-term vandalism, and would benefit from an editor knowledgeable on the subject. JNW (talk) 04:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Stopps v. Just Ladies Fitness

This article refers to a decision of a human rights tribunal in BC. I carved out some of the more egregious POV bits but there may be more to do. In the meantime, I am wondering if there is any sort of policy of what level of significance a decision like this needs to warrant space here. I was tempted to prod the article, but thought I would hold off and see if there are any suggestions here. --KenWalker | Talk 23:01, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Law firm articles

Are law firm articles within the scope of this project? --KenWalker | Talk 20:26, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Marshall

There is a question raised on the Marshall talk page about the NYTimes claim that "The prosecution and the defense must now share evidence fully, regardless of their opinions on its relevance to a case." as cited in the Donald Marshall, Jr.. Is the defence obliged to disclose evidence? --KenWalker | Talk 15:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

No, there is no duty to disclose by defence in criminal cases (in fact, it would undermine the right to silence). The only exception is an alibi defence. I've done a quick search of cases that cite Donald Marshall and discolure in the SCC, and so far, nothing like what the NY Times is saying. It looks like the NY Times made a bad paraphrase. Singularity42 (talk) 16:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Follow up - the paraphrasing could be from the fact that the courts have said the prosecution and defence have duty to work together to make sure disclosure is done properly. But it is disclosure of what the Crown has, not the other way around. Singularity42 (talk) 16:09, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

My guess was that there might have been some discussion about alibi. An alibi raised at the end of a trial by surprise might be bad defence strategy. Beyond that, a disclosure duty on the defence would seem to infringe the right to remain silent. Of course such legal rights may be limited in other countries . . . --KenWalker | Talk 05:23, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Law notability guideline

You are invited to comment on the preliminary law notability guideline. Criticism, comments, better ways of phrasing things - even suggestions of other things it should cover - are welcome. Thanks, Ironholds (talk) 02:12, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Use of royal rams on court pages

In tidying up Supreme Court of British Columbia just now, I noted that File:UK Royal Coat of Arms.svg is used in the infobox as a logo; on the talkpage there have been three separate "fair use rationale" nitices and eivdent deletes of former png etc versions.. Is the royal court of arms indeed the appropriate coat of arms? Or does the court not have its own distinct one? I haven't looked on the Court of Appeal or Provincial Court page, or the SCC page for that matter - is this normal? I.e. use of the royal blazon for a particular institution of Canadian law?Skookum1 (talk) 15:01, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

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Category:Supreme Court of Canada case articles without infoboxes

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know that I have created the above category for articles which need the {{SCCInfoBox}} template. --Eastlaw ^talk ⁄ _contribs 18:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Need help with first patent holder

Hi, there are conflicting stories about the first patent holder, both in the US and Canada. See Talk:Samuel Hopkins (inventor)#Maxey: wrong_Hopkins for more details. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:08, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Canadian law articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

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Talk:List_of_Supreme_Court_of_Canada_cases#Supreme_Court_will_hear_a_landmark_case_which_changed_rules_for_pensioners

Hello, WikiProject Canadian law. You have new messages at Talk:List_of_Supreme_Court_of_Canada_cases#Supreme_Court_will_hear_a_landmark_case_which_changed_rules_for_pensioners. Ottawahitech (talk) 23:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Astley v. Verdun,

Would anyone please look into writing an article about this case: Astley v. Verdun, 2011 ONSC 3651? Robert Astley, the Chair of the CPP Investment Board had successfully sued J Robert Verdun, a shareholder's advocate, for hundreds of thousands of $ and on top of it the judge has imposed a publication ban on Verdun's new book. This must be of interest to some? Ottawahitech (talk) 03:37, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Done, at Astley v. Verdun. Still needs a lot of work regarding references. I also think J Robert Verdun may need to be redirected there as per WP:BLP1E. Singularity42 (talk) 17:48, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I am raising the redirect issue at Talk:J Robert Verdun#Redirect proposal. Singularity42 (talk) 18:10, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Reliable secondary sources for Canadian legal articles

I just happened to see the discussion atWikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Plummer_v._State_.28of_Indiana.29,but saw no Canadians participating there. I wonder where one can find secondary sources for Canadian legal articles? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:55, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Freedom of expression in Canada

Opinions/help sought; Wikipedia_talk:Canadian_Wikipedians'_notice_board#Leading_journal_demands_Harper_set_Canada.E2.80.99s_scientists_free. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 23:55, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Consistency of Infoboxes

I've noticed there is a lot of inconsistency of infobox usage in SCC cases. Is there a particular convention in using either Infobox SCC or Infobox court case ? Even some users are inconsistent in doing so. For example Reference re Securities Act uses the grey court case infobox but Canada Trustco Mortgage Co. v. Canada uses the SCC box though both were created by the same user. Personally I've noticed some bugs or at least improper use of the SCC infobox and aesthetically the Infobox court case looks more consistent with Wikipedia templates. Any thoughts? --Unavoidable (talk) 16:32, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I have not paid much attention to infoboxes, so far, though I find that they sometimes go for glitch over content (just my own opinion). I do remembe though one of the members of this Wikiproject had posted soemething about infoboxes on the general Canada Wikiproject a few weeks ago - sorry I don't remember the details. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:07, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I might work on updating the SCC infobox. Right now the template uses an old implementation using wiki tables whereas for example the Template:Infobox SCOTUS case and Template:Infobox English case both use a subset of the wiki-wide Infobox template which is more robust and less buggy in some instances. Unless there are objections of course. Would love to get more input. --Unavoidable (talk) 07:45, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I updated the SCC infobox in February, as well as upadating the instructions on how to use it (the "SCC" parameter needed a bit explaining in order to use the right YYYY-YYYY input to generate the correct court membership). At the same time, I started a long-term personal project to review all of the SCC case articles. If you want to use it as the start of a more community-based comprehensive review, the page can be found at User:Singularity42/Supreme Court of Canada cases. Singularity42 (talk) 15:40, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Deletions, deletions...

Looks like no place on Wikipedia is safe from deletions. Today it is a category I created: Category:Canadian defamation litigants.

By the way I was looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Canadian_law#WikiProject_Deletion_sorting and noticed it points to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Canadian law (a non-existent link). Ottawahitech (talk) 13:58, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Newly created {{lexum-scc4}}

Please note that I have just created the {{lexum-scc4}} to deal with a minor problem with the {{lexum-scc2}} template for certain older SCC cases. Basically, some older SCC cases had the decision released in a different year than the year it was published in the SCRs (back in the day when publication took a lot of work). This messed up the URLs for the LexUM and CanLII links, which lexum-scc2 could not deal with.

Since this comes up very rarely, and so many Wikipedia articles use lexum-scc2, it made less sense to change the lexum-scc2 template (and have to go through each article and change their parameters as well), then to just create a new template for those few cases. Hence, the lexum-scc4 template (lexum-scc3 is already used for providing basic SCC citations).

Anyway, it works for now. If anyone can come up with a better solution, feel free to try it out. Singularity42 (talk) 21:59, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Might it not have been possible to add an extra (optional) parameter at the end of lexum-scc2 for cases which have different reporter years? I know it's less "elegant" in that it requires users to flag the extra year at the end, but would it not be better to confine the number of templates we have to do the exact same thing? Just my two cents. --Unavoidable (talk) 03:56, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I was trying that, but getting buggy results. Let me give it another shot tonight. Singularity42 (talk) 11:43, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

And done! Lexum-scc2 now has a 5th parameter for year of the decision (if different from the year of publication). Current articles already using lexum-scc2 appear to still be working properly, and articles which couldn't use lexum-scc2 before now appear to work when the 5th parameter is used. Lexum-scc4 has been tagged for deletion under T3 (and would also fall under G7). Singularity42 (talk) 01:07, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

{{lexum-scc}}, {{lexum-scc2}}, and {{lexum-scc3}}

Lexum.org has changed their website for the Supreme Court of Canada judgments. The new format for their urls means that {{lexum-scc}}, {{lexum-scc2}}, {{lexum-scc3}} are broken. The first two are used in the External Links section for every Supreme Court of Canada case article on Wikipedia. The third is used on the list of judgments pages for the Court.

The new url format has no relation to the neutral citation, SCR page number, docket, or even year. Instead, Lexum.org has assigned an arbitrary "item" number in chronological order to each decision, which can only be discovered when looking at the decision's url. Based on this, it seems to me that the various lexum templages are broken with no hope of repairing them.

I am hopeful that another editor can discover how to fix these templates. But if there is no way, I think they will have to be removed from all of the articles, and replaced with a manual entry on each article... Singularity42 (talk) 18:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

It seems the existing cases are fine because LexUM redirects the old URL (for example http://scc.lexum.org/en/2012/2012scc35/2012scc35.html ) to the new "itemized" URLs. So as a matter of legacy, it has at least not broken the old pages. Up until the neutral citation number 2012 SCC 49, the old links are redirected to the new ones. I'm not sure if LexUM will redirect the new ones as well - maybe they just haven't gotten around to it? If they will redirect the new ones, then this is not a big issue.

On the other hand, if they don't redirect the new ones, we could either leave the old links, or convert them to a different format. I see a few possibilities:

1. Convert or add to the template an "item number" field so that the editor manually enters the item number (kind of like the docket number), which will direct to the proper link
2. Delete references to LexUM and redirect to CanLII
3. Link to the 'search page' on LexUM (e.g. something like this: http://scc.lexum.org/decisia-scc-csc/scc-csc/en/decisions/search/index.do?&reference=2012+SCC+54 )
4. If all else fails, delete the template altogether

--Unavoidable (talk) 13:54, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

All good ideas, Unavoidable. Why don't we wait about one month and see if LexUM does a redirect of the new ones. If not, we can implement one of the suggested solutions at that time. Singularity42 (talk) 14:22, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikiproject Watchlist installed for Canadian law

A Wikiproject Watchlist is now available at the bottom of wp:WikiProject Canadian law. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:08, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be working. Perhaps it's looking for the wrong template? It's looking for Template:WikiProject Canadian law which doesn't exist, but for some reason I can't get it to look for the right template because this WP is a sub-project of WPCanada... Unavoidable (talk) 12:13, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• @ Unavoidable, thanks for responding. I have asked User talk:Legoktm on previous occasions to help out in similar circumstances. I wish we could figure out how to fix it ourselves though. Ottawahitech (talk) 13:50, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• @Unavoidable, UPDATE - I have asked about this at User_talk:Legoktm/November_2012#Wikiproject_Watchlist_for_Canadianlaw, but it seems we need consensus to make it work. How many Wikipedians are required to form consensus? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:54, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

We can easily form a consensus on this particular wikiproject, but I'm not sure if Legoktm was talking about the parent WP:Canada project or just this one. Anyone else reading this have any thoughts? Unavoidable (talk) 17:59, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Templates may be deleted?

I saw this transcluded on the main page: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_19#Template:Canlii-scc. Is this of interest here? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:44, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

The template was merged into and replaced by {{Cite CanLII}} - see the discussion here Unavoidable (talk) 18:02, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Does the Youth Criminal Justice Act apply to Canadian articles?

Looking for your WikiProject community's input on the thread I just initiated at the overall Canadian WikiProject. Please view and comment on it here. Thanks, Hwy43 (talk) 04:37, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikiproject Watchlist is broken?

Has anyone else tried to use this Wikiproject Watchlist? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:39, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Some Canadian law help requested

Hi all. I've been trying to edit the Lap_dance#Canada portion of the Lap Dance Wikipedia article, but it seems that Canadian law (as discussed some here: Talk:Lap_dance#Lap_dancing_rules_in_Canada_and_archiving_this_talk_page.3F) may have been evolving in recent years beyond what my own experiences in Quebec have taught me about the legality of lap dancing in Canada. Does anyone have any legal input to the above discussion? Thanx in advance... Guy1890 (talk) 00:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Michael Pliuskaitis - legal action

The article Michael Pliuskaitis mentions a legal action. Can anyone contribute any additional information?. Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 02:49, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Canadian legal history

Please participate: Talk:List of Acts of Parliament of Canada#History being lost through re-directs?. Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 14:20, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Fish J.

Does the use of abbreviations like "Fish J." and "Deschampes and Cromwell JJ." (used in R. v. Basi for example) conflict with WP:JARGON? To me it seems unnecessarily obscure to use these without any explanation. It would be much more readable to write the judge's full name, especially the first time it's mentioned, maybe adding the short form in parentheses if it's needed for brevity further down the article. Please remember that this project's articles are for general readers, not just for legal scholars. Indefatigable (talk) 19:32, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Directors' duties - business law

Just noticed that Directors' duties has sections for Australia, United States and United Kingdom but nothing for Canada? XOttawahitech (talk) 19:18, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Comparator groups analysis in Canadian equality law

Hi everyone. There is an article in need of review at the dreaded Articles for Creation. Perhaps someone from this project can take a look? Please see Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Comparator groups analysis in Canadian equality law. Thank you! SarahStierch (talk) 16:39, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

BC treaties

I keep on coming across redlinks for various modern treaties, the only one of which that I know of that has an article is the Nisga'a Treaty. Others are the Tsawwassen Treaty, the Sliammon Treaty, the Maa-nulth Treaty...I'm not sure if the Shishalh agreement that created the Sechelt Indian Government Districts as normal-title lands, and gave the SFN municipal status, was called a treaty i.e. Sechelt Treaty or not. Things like the agreement with the Haida that were part of the deal to change the name of the QCI to Haida Gwaii were memorandums of understanding or some other signed watchamacallit. These treaties would seem to fall under the purview of this project, and will require some technical legal/constitutional knowledge to do up properly; I primarily come across them in geography and community titles, but have always hesitated to address them as articles.Skookum1 (talk) 02:18, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

@Skookum1: Looks like treaties is an area that needs lots of work. Category:Treaties of Canada contains 9 subcategories plus 271 individual entries. 271 is way too big in my opinion, but according to user:Bearcat there is no need to subdivide categories until they reach 600 entries (I think that's what he said somewhere probably at AFD). There is also a template:Numbertreaty but it only contains the old treaties with the First Nations. XOttawahitech (talk) 23:40, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

The "number of articles" issue only applies if you're trying to invoke the "size of the category" exemption as a counter to a WP:OC#LOCATION argument, such as whether or not Category:Canadian models is subdividable by which province the models happen to have been born in. (Since a fashion model's province of origin has no actual bearing on their career, you would need to have an extremely large category, as in more like 2,000 articles than 200, before you can argue that subcatting it by province is warranted on size grounds.)

But the number of articles in the parent category is irrelevant if you're subdividing a category on grounds that are actually important characteristics of the topic, such as historically or politically defining distinctions within a set of treaties. So the size of Category:Treaties of Canada has nothing to do with its subdividability or lack thereof. Bearcat (talk) 23:52, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Hm, seems like WP:OC#LOCATION would have come in handy rebutting the spurious CfD on Category:Rivers of the Boundary Ranges and its siblings/cousins. Someone there said something about 200 items per category before diffusion was called for. About what's in Category:Treaties of Canada, I'm wondering if Category:International treaties of Canada or Category:International treaties and agreements of Canada would suffice for the Geneva Conventions, UN agreements, Law of the Sea etc. Category:Treaties extended to Canada (i.e. by Great Britain) I note that Hay-Herbert Treaty (the Alaska boundary agreement), the Bering Sea Arbitration and others aren't in there yet; Canada was an independent though client/subsidiary signee to the Alaska treaty, I imagine it's in the US-Canada subcat though; treaties with the US and Russia re BC maybe weren't "extended to Canada", I'm not sure. An international treaties/agreements cat would give a subcat=home to much of the 271 that Ottawahitech observes.Skookum1 (talk) 01:41, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

B.C. bad tenants must pay or go to jail

The above from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-bad-tenants-must-pay-or-go-to-jail-1.2641602 but I find this reporting suspicious since I do not believe a small claims court judge has power to send people to jail? Also, we have not had Debtor's jail l in decades if not centuries. XOttawahitech (talk) 19:56, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Can we get a Canadian Legislation infobox?

There is a problem with the Template:Infobox legislation, which makes it not work properly with Canadian legislation progress: it doesn't handle committee review properly.

In the Canadian system for passage of bills, there is a committee stage between 2nd reading and 3rd reading. This stage is very important, because it is consideration of the details of the bill. Every bill goes through committee, in both the provincial legislatures and the federal Parliament, as a general rule. In Parliament, each bill goes through committee twice: once in the Commons and once in the Senate.

However, the template puts the committee stage after 3rd reading, and in the case of a bicameral legislature, only one committee stage can be used. This is because the tempate is modelled on the US legislative process, where committee stage comes after the bill has passed both houses, and then the two houses appoint a committee to work out a uniform bill.

I've tried filling in the committee dates for both the Commons and the Senate, and only one of them shows; the other is not displayed, because whoever made the template assumed that there would only be one committee. As well, it is not possible to move the committee field in the template to come between 2nd and 3rd reading; I've tried, and it always displays it after 3rd reading.

If you want an example, see the infobox for the Civil Marriage Act. Only the Senate shows a committee, listed after 3rd reading, even though the date for committee was before 3rd reading. The date for the Commons committee is filled in, as you'll see if you try to edit the page, but it doesn't show up in the infobox display.

I suggested amending the template a few months ago on the template talk page, but there was not much interest; only one other editor commented on it.

I do not have the technical skills to create a new infobox, but I thought I would draw this to people's attention, and see if there is a consensus for a new template, for Canadian legislation. If there is, does anyone interested in this project have the technical skills to do it?

Thanks for your consideration. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 06:06, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Apparently if you use committee_report and committee_report2, the infobox only shows one. But if you use conf_committee_passed and conf_committee_passed2, the infobox shows both. As you say however, they show up after the third reading, not between second and third. Is it possible to make this change with the current infobox? Perhaps we can get it to display the fields in the order in which they are specified. If not, make the fields accept machine readable dates so we can let it know the chronological order of them. Connor Behan (talk) 19:53, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Would welcome any efforts - beyond my limited skills, I'm afraid. But, conference committee has a very specific meaning - a conference between the two houses in a bicameral legislature, to reconcile two different versions of a bill. That's not what the committee stage is in the Canadian legislative process. Committee stage occurs for every bill, in both houses of the federal Parliament, and in the unicameral provincial and territorial legislatures, so I don't think getting the conference committee field to display between 2nd and 3rd reading is the solution. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 05:50, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I got the legislation infobox to recognize committee_report2. It looks like I would have a harder time getting it to respect the chronological order (or creating a new infobox for that matter). Connor Behan (talk) 00:04, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Where are all Judges lawyers and where are they not?

Currently only Category:Judges in British Columbia is parented by Category:Lawyers in British Columbia while all other provinces do not automatically assume that a judge must also be a lawyer. Just wondering if the category scheme in BC is incorrect? XOttawahitech (talk) 14:33, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Don't know about currently, but historically many magistrates were simply appointees from the "gentry"....or favourites of the governor or, later, governing party/faction. A quirk of our history p'raps.....modern judges are probably all lawyers...but knowing the history of patronage in BC like I do, it could well be that not all are; historically most were not (the famous names Begbie, Crease etc definitely were, though).Skookum1 (talk) 14:52, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

@Skookum1: Thanks for replying. I must say I am not surprised -- in Ottawa there was a Small Claims court judge who was some prime minister's (Mulroney/Chretien? don't remember) barber. He served for many years, maybe he is still there. Anyway, the question is what do we do? If we remove Category:Lawyers in British Columbia as a parent cat of Category:Judges in British Columbia then we will have to check if each of the 53 judges is also a lawyer and if so add Category:Lawyers in British Columbia. Is anyone up to this? XOttawahitech (talk) 22:25, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I removed the parent category Category:Lawyers in British Columbia from Category:Judges in British Columbia and added all judges that are/were lawyers to the appropriate lawyers category. There were a few lawyers from other provinces who later became judges in Briktish Columbia, and just a couple who did not practice as lawyers -- at least it was not mentioned in their articles. XOttawahitech (talk) 19:39, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

According to [[2]] all judges must be lawyers. You are confusing judges with justices which do not need to be.Mrfrobinson (talk) 20:52, 23 March 2014 (UTC) 02:52, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

"...in Ottawa there was a Small Claims court judge who was some prime minister's (Mulroney/Chretien? don't remember) barber. He served for many years, maybe he is still there." This is simply an urban legend. Under the Ontario Courts of Justice Act, small claims are handled by : Superior Court judges; Provincial Court judges appointed prior to 1990; and lawyers appointed for three year terms. See the Ontario Courts of Justice Act, s. 22; 24(2); 32. You need to be a lawyer to be appointed as either a Superior Court judge or to the Provincial Court. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:45, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

"Bench and bar" chapter in Howay & Scholefield

Came across this chapter in British Columbia: From the Earliest Times to the Present, publ. 1916, E.O.S. Scholefield & F.W. Howay, detailing the early history of courts, bench and bar in BC; am at that book looking for something else but thought it might prove useful here for anyone working on articles needing such details fixed up.Skookum1 (talk) 02:04, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Pride!

You are invited to participate in Wiki Loves Pride!

• What? Wiki Loves Pride, a campaign to document and photograph LGBT culture and history, including pride events
• When? June 2015
• How can you help?

  1.) Create or improve LGBT-related articles and showcase the results of your work here

  2.) Upload photographs or other media related to LGBT culture and history, including pride events, and add images to relevant Wikipedia articles; feel free to create a subpage with a gallery of your images (see examples from last year)

  3.) Contribute to an LGBT-related task force at another Wikimedia project (Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage, etc.)

Or, view or update the current list of Tasks. This campaign is supported by the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group, an officially recognized affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation. Visit the group's page at Meta-Wiki for more information, or follow Wikimedia LGBT+ on Facebook. Remember, Wiki Loves Pride is about creating and improving LGBT-related content at Wikimedia projects, and content should have a neutral point of view. One does not need to identify as LGBT or any other gender or sexual minority to participate. This campaign is about adding accurate, reliable information to Wikipedia, plain and simple, and all are welcome!

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the campaign's main talk page.

Thanks, and happy editing!

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(timestamp may not be accurate) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Another Believer (talk • contribs) 15:13, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Time to purge list of participants?

The list of participants has several editors who have not been active in years. I'm inclined to remove anyone who hasn't posted in at least two years, to provide a more accurate list of contributors to this project. Thoughts?Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 04:56, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Two weeks have gone by without a comment, so I'm going to start removing editors from the list who have not posted to Wikipedia for more than two years. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 01:20, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Article alerts added to this wikiproject

I have taken the liberty of adding the actual Article alerts to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Canadian_law#WikiProject_Canadian_law_Article_alerts. I hope this is useful? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:22, 15 July 2016 (UTC)please ping me

McCarthy Tétrault

I have added third party references to the McCarthy Tetrault article page to enhance its validity. It would be great to have external confirmation that these references are suitable. Many thanks! Toogreen (talk) 17:03, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Meaning of Official Language

There's an interesting discussion of official language at the provincial level going on at the Talk:Saskatchewan page. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 21:49, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

420 Collaboration

You are invited to participate in the upcoming "420 collaboration", which is being held from Saturday, April 15 to Sunday, April 30, and especially on April 20, 2017! The purpose of the collaboration, which is being organized by WikiProject Cannabis, is to create and improve cannabis-related content at Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in a variety of fields, including: culture, health, hemp, history, medicine, politics, and religion. WikiProject Canadian law participants may be particularly interested in the following: Category:Cannabis law reform in Canada. For more information about this campaign, and to learn how you can help improve Wikipedia, please visit the "420 collaboration" page.

---Another Believer _(Talk) 04:13, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

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At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

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If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   10:54, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Proposed category for renaming: Canadian Indigenous case law -> Canadian Aboriginal case law

Just putting notice here for visibility: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 February 18#Category:Canadian Indigenous case law -- Sancho 00:06, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Canadian case law naming conventions: Old or New McGill?

The WP Manual of Style suggests here that "articles on cases should be titled according to the legal citation convention for the jurisdiction that handled the case", and gives example of Bluebook citation for U.S. cases and OSCOLA citation for UK cases. Is there agreement that Canadian case law should follow the McGill Guide (Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation), since that is the most widely accepted one for Canada? If so, which edition of the McGill Guide? As some users may be aware, in the 7th edition the McGill Guide (2010) changed it's case law style to omit periods (full stops) from case names.

Old McGill style (pre-2010): "R. v. Acme Inc."

New McGill style (since 2010): "R v Acme Inc"

(There is now a 2014 8th edition of the McGill Guide which has continued the "no periods" approach. This may or may not be a conscious effort to make Canadian case law style closer to UK, Australian, and New Zealand style as opposed to the American Bluebook style.)

Anyway, my question is what should we do on Wikipedia? Do we continue using the old style or do we start using the 2010 and later McGill style? Converting to the new style would not be that big of a deal—and I am happy to work on it—but I think we should have a consensus that it should be done before it is done. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:33, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Just pinging this again to see if anyone cares what I do? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:23, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I guess I will go ahead with the "conversion" to the new McGill format, then. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Long time, but I agree we should use new McGill in any article primarily about Canadian law, even if it mentions a case from elsewhere. Omit those periods! Sancho 02:31, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

RfC on drug name

Requests for comment are sought at Talk:2010–2017 Toronto serial homicides § RfC on drug name on how to state the name of a drug mentioned in court documents about a living person. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:33, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Style proposal: capitalization of Aboriginal (aboriginal)

Earlier Supreme Court decisions and writing used lowercase "aboriginal". More recent cases (Tsilhqot'in) and almost every contemporary secondary source (See e.g. Jim Reynolds, "Aboriginal Peoples and the Law"; Chelsea Vowel, "Indigenous Writes") use "Aboriginal", always as an adjective ("Aboriginal title") and not a noun (not "Aboriginals"). While certainly not determinative, this is also reflected in Government of Canada drafting recommendations (An Evolving Terminology Relating to Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, Legistics: First Nation(s) - Aboriginal). Sancho 17:37, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

• You can also see the Supreme Court of Canada correcting lowercase to capitalized when it quotes from older cases ("[A]boriginal title"). See Tsilhqot'in v British Columbia. Sancho 05:59, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
• And to clarify, this isn't to alter the capitalization at non-Canadian articles, like Aboriginal title, only within Canada-specific law articles. Sancho 06:07, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this up, Sanchom - I didn't realize there was so much nuance here. I haven't formed a strong opinion on this, but I'd like to offer some information I've found so far that might help the discussion.

Here are some old Wikipedia discussions I was able to dig up that relate to this question:

• WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America discussion, and follow-up discussion at Talk:Indigenous peoples
• heavily debated discussion at WikiProject Indigenous peoples of Australia and offshoot RfC at talk page for MOS:CAPS.

All of these seemed to land on keeping the status quo (of non-capitalization). None of them relate to the domain of Canadian (law) articles specifically, but I think many of the same elements were present in the Australian discussion as are present here.

The usage notes and references at wiktionary:Aboriginal#Usage_notes_2 are interesting and salient.

A search of Canadian news reveals an inconsistent mix of capitalization styles used in practice (even within the same publication), e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=site:cbc.ca+%22aboriginal%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=site:thestar.com+%22aboriginal%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=site:theglobeandmail.com+%22aboriginal%22. (Not capitalizing seems like it might be a bit more common, but hard to say) Colin M (talk) 19:26, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support capitalizing. I don't think the Government of Canada publication should hold much weight here. I'm more impressed by the fact that the Canadian Oxford Dictionary and usage guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style (per wiktionary), and the Canadian Press Stylebook all recommend capitalization. Also, intuitively, I find the analogy with other capitalized adjectives for ethnic identities like Asian, Hispanic, and Nordic straightforward and compelling. Colin M (talk) 16:28, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

RfC on the notability of judges on provincial trial courts

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

This discussion produced no consensus for any changes to WP:JUDGE or for any particular interpretation/application of the existing guideline. Participation was relatively low considering this is about the interpretation of a notability guideline, and split more or less evenly among different views. --RL0919 (talk) 21:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

---

Should judges on Canadian Provincial courts (e.g. the Ontario Court of Justice, or Provincial Court of Manitoba) or Provincial Superior courts (e.g. Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Court of Queen's Bench of Manitoba) be presumed notable? RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 23:46, 21 April 2019 (UTC). Colin M (talk) 03:22, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Background information

My hope here is to provide some relevant factual background to spare editors some time on research. I've tried to present this information as neutrally as possible. Additions or corrections are welcome.

WP:JUDGE says that Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office are presumed notable.

Diagram taken from Court system of Canada. See that article for more detail.

With the exception of the Supreme Court and specialized tax and military courts, all courts in Canada are classified as either federal or provincial. There are three kinds of provincial courts. To make things extra confusing, one of them is actually referred to as "Provincial Court". I'm going to follow the example of Court_system_of_Canada#A_note_on_terminology and write lowercase "provincial" when I'm using the word in its everyday sense of "relating to a province", and use capitalized "Provincial" when referring to the specialized meaning. Anyways, these three levels of provincial courts are:

• Provincial and Superior courts (which this RfC pertains to) and which are organized similarly. They will tend to have many locations in different regions/districts across the province (see for example Ontario_Court_of_Justice#Regions). A judge on one of these courts will be assigned to a particular region (e.g. "Nanaimo") and will hear only cases from that region.
  • Judges will usually hear cases from the district to which they're assigned. In some provinces, judges may occasionally travel to other districts and hear cases there.
  • A judge's decisions may have power over matters outside their region. Example from Mr Serjeant Buzfuz: "if a company in financial difficulties has assets in Kingston, Toronto and Windsor, and a judge sitting in Toronto issues an order affecting the assets of the company in favour of the creditors, that order applies to the assets in Kingston and Windsor". This is codified in the provincial statutes establishing the courts (e.g. "Judges have jurisdiction throughout Saskatchewan").
  • I don't think the difference between Provincial and Superior are relevant here, but my understanding of it is that the Provincial courts are "lower" in the hierarchy - they have limited jurisdiction to hear some lesser criminal offences. Superior courts have inherent jurisdiction and hear appeals from the Provincial courts.
• Courts of Appeal. Each province will have one of these (e.g. Court of Appeal for Ontario). Whereas a province may have hundreds of judges at the previous levels, the court of appeals have between 3-23 judges, depending on the size of the province. Those judges will all sit together at one location (the provincial capital), and hear appeals for cases from across the province. These are analogous to state supreme courts in the US.

Comment on Court organization

I'm afraid I disagree with several parts of this summary, and it bears on the issue of notability. In my opinion, the superior trial court judges do in fact hold province-wide offices in most of the provinces; perhaps not in Ontario. The points about residency requirements and judicial districts are not accurate as general statements.

The starting point is that Canada is a federation, and each province can organise its court system as it sees fit. I therefore do not think it is appropriate to make general statements about how the courts are organised in one province, such as Ontario, and assume that that is how all the provinces organise their courts. There is considerable variation between the provinces, and it bears on the issue of whether a judge holds province-wide office, as required by the current notability standard.

Second, it is important not to confuse a residency requirement for a judge with that judge's jurisdiction, or location of sitting. Residency requirements are to ensure that there are judges throughout the province, to respond to local cases. Residency requirements ensure that the court is truly operating throughout the province, rather than just being in the major centres. I note Bearcat's comments about how the Superior Court of Ontario does restrict the powers of judges to hear matters outside their area, but that is not universal, and probably reflects the tremendous size of Ontario. However, in smaller provinces such as Saskatchewan, judges of the Queen's Bench can and do sit anywhere in the province. They are not restricted to sitting in the judicial centre where they have their residence. That is what the phrase in the QB Act means: each judge has jurisdiction throughout Saskatchewan. That is a province-wide office. I've not researched this point, but my understanding is that the same holds true in the other two prairie provinces.

Thanks for clarifying this. I've updated the summary above to reflect this information (removed text struck through, added text underlined). Colin M (talk) 16:06, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Third, nor does each province even have judicial districts, unlike Ontario. Again, Saskatchewan is the counter-example: judicial districts were abolished close to 40 years ago. The Court of Queen's Bench has jurisdiction throughout Saskatchewan, as does each judge of the QB.

The website for the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench says "Each Queen's Bench judge is assigned to a specific judicial centre, but because the Court is an itinerant court, the judges also travel to and sit in other judicial centres." Then it lists judges for each of several locations: Regina, Battleford, Estevan, Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Saskatoon, Swift Current, and Yorkton. (Maybe you can tell me if there's a difference between a "judicial centre" and a "judicial district", but for the purposes of this discussion, they seem interchangeable to me. You still have the situation of the court having many locations spread across the province, with each judge assigned to a specific location.) Colin M (talk) 15:54, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

"Judicial centre" is not the same as a "judicial district". Saskatchewan used to have district courts, where the judge was appointed to sit in a particular district court and only had jurisdiction in that judicial district. That was abolished over forty years ago and the judges of the district courts were appointed to the Queen's Bench, to establish a single court with jurisdiction throughout the Province. A "judicial centre" is simply the term for the location of a local court house of the Queen's Bench. You file your court documents in the judicial centre closest to where the cause of action arose. That's an administrative matter, not a jurisdictional one. QB Judges are appointed to particular judicial centres, to ensure that there are judges throughout the province, but they are not limited to sitting in their judicial centres. They have jurisdiction throughout the province and can sit wherever the Chief Justice assigns them on a particular case. --Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 17:04, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Fourth, Provincial Courts are not lower in the hierarchy. They are parallel to the Superior trial courts, and in fact hear over 90% of all criminal cases. The only general offence which is in the exclusive jurisdiction of the superior trial court is murder. (There are some other offences in the exclusive jurisdiction, but they are very rarely the basis for charges, such as treason or intimidating Parliament.) Other matters may be in the Superior Trial Court because of elections by the Crown or the accused. Alternatively, depending on how the Crown and the defence choose to proceed in the Provincial Court, that Court may hear very serious cases. And, the appeal is not necessarily from the Provincial Court to the Superior Trial court. The appeal may go from Provincial Court to the Superior Trial Court in some cases, but to the Court of Appeal in other matters. The bottom line is that the Provincial Court has extensive criminal jurisdiction.

Fifth, how the Provincial Court is organised will also depend on each province. It's not correct to assume that Provincial Court judges only sit in the location where they have their residence. Nor does residency impose a territorial jurisdiction on the judge. To resolve this issue it would be necessary to check the Provincial Court Act for each province and territory, rather than make assumptions.

I think that all of these points are relevant to the notability issue. In some provinces, perhaps most, the superior trial court judges hold jurisdiction throughout the province. That is a province-wide office. The same appears to be true for Provincial Court judges. But, before any decision on the notability based on province-wide office can be made, it is necessary to determine how each province and territory organisms its courts, rather than make assumptions.

Now, that doesn't mean the notability criteria couldn't be changed, perhaps to have a specific notability requirement based on court hierarchy rather than province-wide office. But, if we're working the current notability criteria, which includes judges holding province-wide offices, then the trial court judges meet that criterion, in my opinion. --Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for this information. I'm wondering if you could provide any more context on 'traveling judges' in provinces that allow judges to hear cases outside their assigned district. Why would this arise in practice? Would a judge be called to another district because there's a backlog of cases that the judges assigned to that region can't handle? Or because they need a judge with a particular specialization and none is assigned to that district? Can you comment on how many days out of the year a judge might typically spend working outside their assigned district? Colin M (talk) 16:19, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to rely too much on my own personal experience, because that is non-verifiable. However, in this comment, you are assuming that judges of the Saskatchewan QB have assigned "districts", which is exactly the point I'm trying to correct. They don't have districts. They have jurisdiction throughout the province, because the QB is a court that has jurisdiction throughout the province, as set out in the provisions of the Queen's Bench Act which I've previously mentioned (that's verifiable, although primary source). As the Sask QB website says, the Court is an itinerant one - all the QB judges travel through the Province and exercise their jurisdiction throughout the Province. The Province is their "district".--Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 17:11, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

My question was about all provinces, not just SK. Maybe my use of the term 'district' was an abuse of nomenclature, but what I meant was any geographic region (contained within the province) to which a judge is assigned. In the case of the SK Queen's Bench, the website lists each judge as being assigned to one of eight "judicial centres" (Regina, Battleford, Estevan, Moose Jaw, etc.). So in the context of that court, my question would be how often and under what circumstances a judge would travel outside their assigned "judicial centre" to hear cases. (Though I don't think this is particularly critical to the policy question at hand. I was just interested in getting some feeling for the degree to which travelling outside your assigned location is an exception to the norm.) Colin M (talk) 18:57, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

It is not an exception to the norm at all. That is what the QB web-page means by saying that the Court is an "itinerant" court. Any QB judge can hear a matter anywhere in the Province. In fact, it is customary when a judge is appointed that they sit at all of the judicial centres in their first year, to give them familiarity with all of the province and the various judicial centres. After that, they go where needed and assigned by the Chief Justice. They're on the road a lot. They're itinerant. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 11:35, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Context

This bears on the question of:

• whether we ought to list all the judges of each Provincial/Superior court (in the article about that court, or in a separate article). Discussed at WikiProject Canada here
• whether articles about justices of these courts that have no other assertion of notability (e.g. Lee Ann Martin, Patti-Anne Umpherville) should be deleted. Discussed at WikiProject Canada here

Courtesy pinging @Mr Serjeant Buzfuz, Bearcat, Mindmatrix, and RebeccaGreen:, as participants in related earlier discussions. Colin M (talk) 03:25, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Survey/Discussion

• Oppose A judge that sits in one of a dozen districts within a province and hears cases from that district does not meet the commonsense definition of having "provincewide office". A vote of 'Support' in this case would imply that every judge in Canada is notable, which seems counterintuitive on its face. Also, since it has caused some confusion, I'd like to see the wording of WP:JUDGE updated (perhaps with a footnote), to clarify what sorts of state/province judges are considered notable. If the Canadian case is confusing, so will many other similar court systems be. For example, are judges on the Magistrates Court of Queensland presumed notable? Colin M (talk) 03:30, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support - with qualification. Under the current "Notability" guideline, a judge who holds province-wide office is presumed to be notable. There is nothing in that guideline about the position of the judge in the judicial hierarchy. The test is province-wide office, which as I've argued above, is met by most superior trial court judges and Provincial Court judges in Canada, depending of course on their statutory grant of jurisdiction. That in turn means that there has to be a review of the grant of jurisdiction for each court and each province, to determine if the judges of a particular court meet the notability test. But, there is no presumption that a trial court judge is not notable per se; the test is whether they hold a province wide office, not whether they sit as trial judges. Now my qualification: as I've suggested elsewhere on the Canada project page, it seems to me that the issue is the notability guideline. Should it be changed so that the test is more based on the position in the hierarchy, rather than province-wide office? Should we have a Canada-specific notability guideline? I would support opening a discussion on that issue, rather than trying to read in a gloss that trial court judges somehow don't hold province-wide offices. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 17:22, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Mr Serjeant Buzfuz: I'm definitely sympathetic to this point of view.

However, regarding creating a Canada-specific notability guideline... One thing to note is that an entity is considered notable if it meets any notability guideline. So adding a subject-specific notability guideline can only widen the field of notable people, not narrow it. If you think that the wording of WP:JUDGE fits the kind of lower court judges I've described here, but you share my view that they ought not be considered notable by default (unless they meet WP:GNG or another SNG), then adding a Canada-specific notability guideline won't solve that problem.

What do you think about modifying the wording of WP:JUDGE directly? To me, the obvious refinement would be to replace the "sub-national office" criterion with "highest court of appeal at the sub-national level". This would also accord with the SNG developed at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges/Notability Colin M (talk) 19:22, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support - with same qualification as Buzfuz. Under the WP:JUDGE notability guideline, all judges in Canada would be presumed notable, as they hold either national or provincial office. But that’s a bad guideline, since the large majority of those judges would fail the WP:GNG. I would suggest only Supreme Court Canada Justices and the chiefs of other courts should be presumed notable, and for the rest notability should have to be demonstrated.--Trystan (talk) 15:02, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I think that the discussion really should be at the "Notability" page, which is the source of the problem. As Colin M points out, someone is "notable" if they meet any notability criteria, so I don't see how we could limit the dfeinition of "Notability" for Canada, if the broad definition of notability is still used on the main "notability" page. The definition of 'judge' there seems to be based on a US model, where judges are appointed to territorial divisions smaller than the state (eg districts, counties, municipalities). There is nothing in that definition that limits notability to the judge's place in the judicial hierarchy. I would support a discussion on that page to change the definition, to make it hierarchy specific, rather than geographic, as is the current definition. Also, I don't see why the discussion here is limited to the provincial courts. Exactly the same critique could be applied to the trial judges of the Federal Court of Canada. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:44, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - Provincial courts in Canada are not constitutional courts per section 96. They are simply a creature of provincial statute. As such, they are not really national courts in any way, their jurisdiction is quite limited. If we are going to deem them notable, why not tribunal members on Refugee Boards, Human Rights Tribunals, Workers' Compensation tribunals etc.? I also expect there are very few reliable sources about many provincial court judges, so creating a presumption of notability is likely to create a lot of sloppy, poorly sourced articles. If a provincial court justice is notable, that's great but I don't think we should assume all are notable. How many can you name off the top of your head?--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 21:16, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

The discussion here is not limited to Provincial Courts. The issue first arose with respect to the superior trial courts in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, which certainly are s. 96 courts. Nor do the Provincial Courts have a "quite limited" jurisdiction: the only common offence that is not potentially within their jurisdiction is murder. One stat I have seen is that approximately 90% of all criminal charges are resolved in the Provincial Courts. Nor is "national courts" part of the definition of notability: "Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office..." A judge who holds a provincewide office is presumed to be notable under the current guideline. I really think that the notability page is where this discussion should be occurring, because as long as that is the terminology used in the guideline, we will continue to have this discussion. And, I think that the notability guideline should not turn on factors such as whether a particular jurisdiction uses districts, or how much judges travel within their province, or the type of offences that are within the jurisdiction of the court. Notability shouldn't depend on discussions about the statutory jurisdiction of a court, or whether a particular province uses districts or not, or whether judges of a court travel. Those are too granular to determine notability, and could mean that judges of the same level of court are notable in one province, but not notable in another. For instance, the Saskatchewan QB does not have any districts, while the Ontario Superior Court does appear to have them. Should the definition of "province wide office" depend on factors like that, when both courts are s. 96 courts? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 10:00, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, missed that. I thought we were talking about true provincial courts, not provincial Supreme/Superior/Queen Bench courts (as they are known in BC/Ontario/Alberta). I think it is probably appropriate to have deemed notability for s. 96 court justices. Even if they are assigned a district it is a federal position. While the courts are "provincial", s. 96 justices are federal employees. I am worried though that many have little written about them and there may be few reliable sources on which to ground an article. If that occurs then there is risk a lot of WP:OR may occur. But perhaps that is a problem for later.

Concerning true provincial courts (non s 96, ie statutory provincial courts) I think we should not create a deemed notability. These courts usually have limited criminal jurisdiction. They also do not have inherent jurisdiction and are subject to judicial review by true courts (ie s 96 courts). They also tend to only have Small Claims jurisdiction (depending on the province between $10,000-$50,000). I expect most provincial court judges have next to nothing written about them in reliable sources. Some provincial court judges (again talking about non s. 96 courts) will certainly be notable but I don't think we should assume that in all cases.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 21:40, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think that the distinction you're making between s. 96 courts and Provincial Courts is relevant. Both types of courts are provincial courts: they are created by provincial law, their organization depends on provincial law, and significantly for the definition of "notable" that we have to work with, whether they have province-wide jurisdiction depends on provincial law. As well, it's not the case that Provincial Courts have limited jurisdiction. They have a broad jurisdiction which includes manslaughter, serious sexual assaults, corruption charges, dangerous driving causing death (e.g the Humboldt Broncos case). The only common offence which they cannot hear is murder. (There are a few others that are in the exclusive jurisdiction of the s. 96 courts, like treason, but there are rarely charges under those provisions.) The stat I've seen is that 90% of all criminal cases are determined in the Provincial Court, which certainly suggests that they are very important.

But, I do agree with you that there's not likely to be much publicly written about either type of judge: trial judges, whether in the Provincial Court or the s. 96 courts, aren't likely to have very much public discussion, which is why it is questionable that they should be considered notable. Personally, I think that the notability criteria need to be changed, to exclude most trial judges from the presumed notability. I would keep the Chief Judge / Chief Justice of trial courts in the presumed notability category. A notability criterion that reflects place in the judicial hierarchy is likely a better approach than the "province-wide" office, which is currently the case. The current test means that we can get into abstruse discussions of the jurisdiction of a particular court. Place in the judicial hierarchy is a much simpler test, easier to work with, and more likely reflects notability. That wouldn't prevent a particular trial judge from meeting the notability criteria (eg - for deciding a particular case which is itself notable) but would respond to the concern raised in this proposal. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:52, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

There is an important distinction between s 96 and statutory provincial courts. While s 96 are called "provincial superior courts" they are federal courts created by the British North America Acts, now the Constitution Act, 1867. They are not created by provincial law and their organization does not depend on provincial law. Appointments are made by the federal Governor General on advice of the Prime Minister of Canada not by provincial Premiers. True provincial courts (statutory courts) are governed by provincial law and appointments are usually if not always made by the provincial Lieutenant Governor on advice from the Premier or some legislated advisory group. All of this is rather confusingly explained here. The distinction is important because true provincial courts have much less jurisdiction, somewhat less job security, less exposure as judges are often purely local etc.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 02:27, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Section 96 does not create the provincial superior courts. They are created by each provincial legislature, using the authority set out in s. 92(14): "...the Constitution, Maintenance, and Organization of Provincial Courts, both of Civil and of Criminal Jurisdiction..." Section 96 just provides that the federal government appoints the judges of the provincial superior courts, it does not create them. Each of the provincial superior trial courts is created by a provincial statute, such as the Queen's Bench Act of Saskatchewan and the Supreme Court Act of British Columbia, cited earlier in this discussion.

Nor are they federal courts. The federal power to create courts is set out in s. 101 of the Constitution Act, 1867. That power is much more limited than the power of the provinces under s. 92(14), as the federal courts can only be given jurisdiction to deal with "laws of Canada" i.e. statutes passed by the federal government. The provincial superior trial courts can be given a much broader jurisdiction under s. 92(14) than the federal courts can be given under s. 101, including a guaranteed jurisdiction over constitutional issues and jurisdiction over both provincial and federal matters. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:21, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

• Provincial Courts / Superior Courts not notable, Provincial Courts of Appeals notable (Summoned by bot) - If judges generally hear cases within one district and only hear cases in the rest of the province on an exceptional basis, they don't seem to reasonably pass WP:JUDGE (judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office), as this is to me common sense. Because judges of the Provincial Court of Appeals are not at all limited to a district, they are notable. --MrClog (talk) 17:17, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

That might be correct, if Provincial Court and superior trial court judges were limited to districts. However, that is not necessarily the case, as I have repeatedly pointed out in this discussion, with citations to relevant statutes. It depends on the law of each province, setting out the jurisdiction of each court. If you want to argue that judges hear cases in one district, then , because that statement just keeps getting repeated in this discussion without any attempt to provide a reasonable authority for it. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:12, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal to redirect all Canadian project related talk pages

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Discussion on NOtability criteria for trial judges

We had a lively discussion on this issue two years ago, and I finally got around to raising the issue on Wikipedia talk:Notability (people). Hasn't got much comment so far. Hope anyone with an interest in it will take a look. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:32, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources

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