Property Rights

Property Assessments in Ontario

Premier Dalton McGuinty has called the 2008 property assessments ‘unrealistic'. Real estate markets have cooled considerably since the valuation date of January 1, 2008, prompting reporters to ask Mr. McGuinty this week if the assessments should be scrapped and redone.“You would hope that municipal councils would act reasonably and responsibly given the circumstances,” Mr. McGuinty replied, “and recognize that that perhaps was an unrealistic assessment attained by values at the time.”

MPAC, a non-profit agency funded by municipalities, said it will mail out assessment notices for almost 4.7 million properties in 2008. Property values in the province jumped 20 per cent in the three years since frozen by Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government. A new four-year phase-in period is intended "to add stability and predictability" to the assessment process.

Real Estate Fraud - you're the target -The Many Faces of Fraud. The Land Titles Register: Can it be relied on? Why Land Titles Assurance cannot necessarily be relied on- a case in point: The Applicant claims that the owner's signature on the Mortgage was forged, and that the owner's husband, disbarred lawyer Arthur Ault, was directly involved in the forgery. The Applicant claims to be an innocent party to the forgery.

Think about it: The Crown seized a property even though no charges had been laid against anyone. This is a dramatic exercising of state power. The constitutionality of the legislation is currently before the Supreme Court of Canada. Police and governments need tools to fight crime and ensure the personal security of citizens. But if the tools are at the same time too blunt and too powerful, we’re all in trouble...allowing the state simply to grab it raises a host of scary implications.

Municipal board hears praise for backyard turbine. Expert finds structure safe and certifiable under Ontario’s building code. “I can only imagine that the decision made in this process is going to be looked at quite closely by others,” said Jyoti Zuidema, OMB vice-chair, who presided at the hearing.

Bold, outrageous and highly organized: The new face of real estate fraud

Rights of passage: Forget suburban sprawl, ring-roads and urban infilling. If you're looking for the best turf war in the city, you need to go to Rockcliffe Park: January 27, 2007.

Heads up- Municipal Act Reform will give municipalities broader powers: June 15, 2006

Protection- March 13, 2006 : A new bylaw or revisions to an existing bylaw must include protection for what are called "non-conforming uses". Friction frequently arises over the extent of that protection. (Supreme Court of Canada decision & related cases discussed)

Anton Piller Order -This article
I. Background
II. Obtaining the Anton Piller Order
III. Losing the Remedy
IV. Executing the Anton Piller Order

Lowering the Bar: A Citizen Special Report-(series)

Lawyer cheated clients of $476,000, but didn't have to spend a day in jail. One victim tells why this came as no surprise: "Legal system protects its own " plus 15 other articles in this award-winning series: index of disbarred lawyers.

Raw Judicial Power-Includes extensive bibliography & references

I- Introduction
II- The Charter: For Better Or For Worse - Or Better And For Worse?
III-Should we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
IV-Charter Pros and Cons
V- How "active" should judges be?
-Judicial activism is OK
-Done correctly, judicial review enhances democracy
-Can we see it as a dialogue?
-Containing the "Jurocracy"
-Raw Judicial Power - intolerable in a democracy?
VI- What to do? Some suggestions…
-Do Nothing
-Judicial Self-Restraint
-Election and Recall of Judges
-Reform of the Appointment Process
-Canadian Judicial Council: Paper Tiger?
-An Active/Inactive Parliament
-Section 33 - The Override Clause
-Abolish the Charter?
VII-Conclusion
-Shakespeare's warning , from Isabel to Angelo in Measure for Measure (even if not meant to be a caution to a juristically overzealous judge is still à propos): "It is excellent to have a giant's strength but tis tyrannous to use it like a giant."

Manufactured Prosperty: Topics-

-what is money?-commodity money-fiduciary money-fiat money
-central banks and legal tender
-the gold standard-boom/bust cycles-chart of money supply growth.

Court Challenges Program: Fund all the interests or none of them. That would be fair.

Litigation is not suited for balancing interests. Those there, in the courtroom, are those who can afford to be there. Litigation is notoriously expensive. Nowhere more so than on large-scale constitutional cases. Many times cases before the court do not include those who have interests in the matter but cannot afford to be there. Providing access to a privileged fund for litigation to only those who fit a politically driven conception is unfair.

Limitation Periods in Ontario

On January 1, 2004, Ontario's Limitations Act, 20021 (the "Act") came into force. The Act limits the period of time during which a person may initiate court proceedings in respect of a claim. For the purposes of the Act, a claim is defined as "a claim to remedy an injury, loss or damage that occurred as a result of an act or omission."

How to tell a lawyer from an avocado

Chief Justices of the Supreme Court: 1875 to 2006

Case Law applicable to your situation

In depth: Supreme Court of Canada

The Jurisprudence of .Canada.s Fundamental
Values. and Appointment to the Supreme
Court of Canada: Judged by the norms of liberal democratic governance, our system of appointing
judges to the Supreme Court of Canada is a constitutional embarrassment. This much
must, by now, be beyond dispute.

University Legal Education in Canada is Corrupt Beyond Repair : Right at the top of my ever-lengthening list of "things about Canada which I cannot understand" is the fact that, every year, we spend billions of dollars on institutions which we are pleased to call universities. Between 1975 and 2005 I taught in the Faculty of Law of the University of Western Ontario. My main teaching responsibility was Constitutional Law. One year a student concluded the final examination with this statement: "George Eliot was imprisoned for being a homosexual". ...in reality, George Eliot is the pen name of the famous writer Mary Ann Evans

When one observes a dismal current reality, there is a tendency to assume that there once existed a golden age. The best that can be said is that there was, in the 1950s and 1960s, a bronze age.

A Canadian Judicial Council out of control: "Simply, as statutorily conceived and constructed, the CJC's brief is judicial education and discipline, full stop. That brief does not include, as the Council here pretends, sustaining "public confidence in the independence and impartiality of Canada's judges", but even if it did, such permission would, and could, not include authority to challenge the constitutionally arranged, separated, and divided responsibilities of the federal state."

The Sub Judice Rule: The term sub judice literally means "under judicial consideration". The sub judice rule is part of the law relating to contempt of court. The rule governs what public statements can be made about ongoing legal proceedings.

The Feduciary Principle “No Man Can Serve Two Masters”- or- how the Law Society re-wrote the rules.

The complete IFR series 2008: by Dr. Al Rosen- Canada has embarked on a complex and premature path to overhaul its accounting guidelines and the way in which every public company reports earnings and cash flows to investors. The proposed changes are so significant that almost every document that references accounting measures in Canada will have to be rethought.

I-Accounting takes a step backwards

II-New accounting standards leave much to chance

III-IFRS accounting makes analysis tricky

IV- 'One-size-fits all' is inappropriate for Canada

Limited Government and
Freedom of Religion in Bruker v. Marcovitz

The Supreme Court of Canada has long pursued the view that our law is somehow
an expression and repository of what it terms “Canada’s fundamental values.” In
Bruker v. Marcovitz, the Court added to the catalogue of these judicially decreed
and enforced values one concerning religion, namely, the protection of Canadians
against the arbitrary disadvantages of their religions

STRICT LIABILITY

I. Introduction

II. Strict Liability - What it really means and how is it different from other kinds of claims?

III. What is and is not a defence under the law of Strict Liability?

IV. Applying Strict Liability to the African Lion Safari case

VII. Strict Liability in Other Circumstances

There is good reason for the public at large to be confused about claims based upon strict liability. This is because the most common kinds of lawsuits are based upon some kind of “fault”. For example, the two most common lawsuits involve breach of contract and negligence. The main difference between these two examples is that under contract law, an obligation is voluntarily assumed by the parties to the contract, whereas under negligence law, an obligation is imposed on one of the parties as a matter of law. Negligence law is part of a larger area of law known as Tort law. This area of law is commonly divided into intentional and unintentional torts, with negligence falling into the latter category. In the case of both intentional and unintentional torts, however, obligations are imposed on a party. But in the case of both contract and tort law, a defendant is generally without liability so long as he or she is without fault. In the public perception, therefore, liability is closely linked to fault. If liability is imposed without fault, there is a sense that some injustice has occurred.

The “Coase theorem,” by Dr. Glenn Fox: In one respect, is a triumph of social science scholarship. Web searches using “Coase theorem” as key words typically yield over 100,000 hits. Economists, legal scholars, environmentalists, and political scientists have written volumes on the theorem. Few ideas written by economists in the 20th century have been as widely debated. And the debating continues, 47 years after the publication of “The Problem of Social Cost” (Coase 1960), the essay recognized as the source of the ideas in question. There is only one
problem: Ronald Coase maintains that the theorem that bears his name conveys an idea that is antithetical to the message that he intended.
My view is that virtually all of the criticism of the Coase theorem fails to appreciate the actual message that Coase intended with “Social Cost” and is, therefore, essentially irrelevant. Tragically, because
we have focused on what he was not saying, we have not grasped what he was saying. Consequently we have been neither sufficiently appreciative nor sufficiently critical of his actual message.

Supreme Contempt for Democracy and the Rule of Law

The panel has been asked to ponder the role of courts and judges in modern democracies. I submit that the answer is straightforward: The proper role of courts and judges in any genuine democracy, ancient or modern, is to uphold the law, not to change the law. The legislators who entrenched the Charter in the Constitution had no intention of abandoning the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of a doctrine of aggressive judicial review. They never intended to pass the legislative torch.