Leah West and Craig Forcese are pleased to announce the publication of their treatise on national security law in Canada. It is available in print and in e-book format from Irwin Law.
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Something new from guest contributor Tyler Wentzell, author of the new book Not for King or Country: Edward Cecil-Smith, the Communist Party of Canada, and the Spanish Civil War. In this post, Tyler compares the original Canadian foreign fighters to the recent phenomenon of Canadians travelling abroad to join or support ISIS, and the government’s response to those left behind when the war was over.
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Bill C-59, the National Security Act 2017, is now back before the Commons to consider the (relatively minor) amendments proposed by the Senate. Baring a catastrophe, it should make it past this final Commons-Senate ping-pong and become law. “Becoming law” means “coming into force”. There are rules about coming into force, and I review how they apply to C-59 because: it’s complicated.
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Last week, Leah West addressed delegates at the 6th Open Government Partnership Global Summit hosted by Canada in Ottawa. She was asked to participate on a panel hosted by Public Safety Canada entitled: National Security Transparency: Expert Perspectives along with Wesley Wark, Christopher Parsons and Veronica Kitchen. The following is a copy of Leah’s remarks on the subject of “secret law.”
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Lurking in the details of bill C-59 are new features in the law of evidence whose impact is uncertain. In this blog series, Leah West examines the new “class privilege” in the law of evidence created for those entities assisting CSE, and compares it the class privileges existing elsewhere in Canadian law, including under the CSIS Act.
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Lurking in the details of bill C-59 are new features in the law of evidence whose impact is uncertain. In this blog series, Leah West examines the new “class privilege” in the law of evidence created for those entities assisting CSE, and compares it the class privileges existing elsewhere in Canadian law, including under the CSIS Act.
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CBC reported on 5 May 2019 that the Canada Border Services Agency had seized the phone and computer of a Canadian lawyer returning to Canada, after he refused to provide access passwords (urging the devices contained sensitive solicitor-client materials). This is the latest in a series of cases in which the search and seizure powers of the CBSA at the border have provoked controversy. In this post, we unpack what we see to be the most important legal questions.
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In February, the political class in Canada was preoccupied by “L’Affaire SNC-Lavalin” – the controversy over whether a prominent Québec company should be prosecuted for alleged overseas bribery, or instead dealt with under a Criminal Code remediation agreement. Lost in this discussion was the way Attorney General Ron Basford described the standards of attorney general independence in a 1978-1979 national security matter. This post revisits this forgotten case.
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