1/ Regarding the Premier's office communications:
Here is the report on the National, with comments from myself, @Ideablawg and @BoisvertDm: cbc.ca/player/play/21… 2/ Not surprisingly, I had a lot more to say. There were 4 major themes, with one big caveat. The caveat is we still don't know exactly what happened. While the CBC would not print such a story without multiple sources, there's still a lot unknown here. cbc.ca/news/canada/ca…

Nader and I are thinking along the same lines. I just put together slides for a Case Alert on Beaver and spent five slides showing how bad things are for the accused in rights cases.

https://twitter.com/Nader_Hasan_law/status/1601983084420898823

His point on Kasirer and Jamal is well put. More importantly, those two have been on the winning side of every Charter case involving criminal law this year.

Well, I’ve had a chance to start reading the SCC’s latest: R v Beaver. It’s as disappointing as I had feared. The voluntariness and RPG analysis are not earth shattering, but the fresh start stuff is going to cause great difficulty. Maybe I’m overreading, but the fresh start stuff encourages all kinds of Charter violations. You can just fix it all later!!!

1/ Since it's the best Alberta related decision I've had the chance to enjoy in a few years, I'm going to celebrate the promotion of Khullar JA to Khullar CJA by explaining why I'm so excited by it. 2/ I've now appeared before Justice Khullar 4 or 5 times. Every appearance is similar. First, she is unfailingly courteous and polite - and not every judge of the Court of Appeal is. Second, she is open-minded and clearly cares about getting the decision right.

1/ Met with former students who are now in Year 5-6 of their career. To say it was enlightening is the understatement of the year. They are at the point when the shock of law job hunt/work has worn off and are trying to figure out how to take control of their career. Not easy. 2/ As I mentioned for a metaphor, you get lured onto a treadmill and find that it's incredibly hard to get off once it gets to high speed. Also hard to jump to another treadmill. But most find it equally hard to take the sensible choice - slow down and figure out if...

1/ R v King, 2022 ONCA 665 is an important decision. Most of you who know it because of how it uses Gladue principles in Corbett applications. But the Fairburn ACJO and George JA written decision has much much more in it. 2/ I will start with a minor quibble. On Issue 1, self defence instruction, the Crown at trial expressly agreed that the instruction was good and then tried to reverse its position on appeal.

1/ I thought it might be fun to talk about what I, as a criminal law professor, have learned from the "protesters". I will call it "Convoy Law". 2/ Convoy Law 1: "Anyone has the right to protest any way they want in a public space, regardless of other applicable "laws". At the end of the day, protest trumps everything else.

1/ R v Hamilton, 2005 SCC 47: "In short, the actus reus for counselling is the deliberate encouragement or active inducement of the commission of a criminal offence." 2/ R v Hamilton, 2005 SCC 47: And the mens rea consists in nothing less than an accompanying intent or conscious disregard of the substantial and unjustified risk inherent in the counselling: that is, it must be shown that the accused either intended...

1/ I'm going live in a few hours with my new Criminal Defence Essentials podcast. I'll be up at 11 am MT, 1 pm ET (usually 12 pm MT - but I have an appt). You can join me here: 2/ You can also download the podcast version any time starting this afternoon. We're available on many pod catchers - but not yet on Itunes (grrr....). For some reason there is a delay there. But always available on Spotify and here: criminaldefenceessentials.podbean.com

1/ More on Windsor: CJ Morawetz is expected to publish the reasons for his decision to grant the injunction this week, but during the hearing Friday, he said the protesters’ right to freedom of expression had to be balanced against everybody else’s right to use the bridge. 2/ I don't want to say too much, because the reasons have not been published. But I don't really understand this either. Let's talk about freedom of expression for a moment.

1/ I'm reading this from the Globe and Mail, and I want to yell "fake news". Let's dissect. theglobeandmail.com/canada/article… 2/ "The Ambassador Bridge shutdown highlighted the impact that only a few determined protesters could have on a crossing that carries hundreds of millions of dollars in goods a day." I think it shows the impact of government/police refusing to take action.

1/ Fictional thread: “Mr. Sankoff, you’ve just been appointed AG Ontario. What’s your first order of business?” “Well, I will stop 720 Bay from taking such crazy positions that the SCC stomps all over them!” [Cue laugh track]. 2/ “what about charges for Randy Hillier?” Well, I think they are necessary. He’s made himself the leader of an illegal “protest” that has caused real harm, ignored legal limits and shown contempt for judges and the public alike. He should face the consequences.

1/ So all of this falls on the executive. (Don’t @ me @GarethMorley3). What the hell is going on? Well, there would seem to be a few options. None of them good. Let’s figure it out. 2/ Option A. We don’t have the operational capacity to deal with any of this. To me, that’s scary. If we can’t deal with this, how can we deal with a bona fire crisis???

1/ I have a few thoughts about this dispatch as well. First, Matt has been a great source for information. Dispassionate and reasonable. He has pointed out things he’s seen whether they match narrative or not.

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1491767899828146178

2/ So I have a few thoughts about his overall thesis: that police are not intervening because of fear of mass chaos event at Coventry. This fear seems reasonable (though not inevitable) given his reporting.

1/ Court of Queens Bench, Friday. Sankoff J. presiding (fictional obviously - no one is insane enough to appoint me to the bench). "Call the first case!" Clerk: "It's the AG Alberta v "Freedom Convoy"" Sankoff J: "Great, another family law case." [Cue laugh track]. 2/ AG Alberta: "Your Honour (I love the sound of that), we're here asking for an injunction that will forbid the freedom convoy from operating near the border and blocking all our commerce." Freedom Convoy: "We oppose!"

The first rule of injunctions is that... you do not talk about injunctions. (Sorry. I couldn't resist. Tough day...). No, the first rule of injunctions is that "the court will generally not grant an injunction for the purpose of enforcing moral obligations or as substitute for the criminal law or quasi-criminal law. There usually must be some property right or some other right infringed."

1/ I’ve stated several times that carrying empty gas cans, in these circumstances, is a crime. Perhaps I should briefly explain why. 2/ Its not actually that complex. There seems to be some belief that while carrying in full gas cans might be assisting in the ongoing convoy (mischief and breach of lawful order when they honk), the empty cans don’t really do anything. Thus not a crime.

2/ I believe that we are at an important time in history. The manner in which (mis)information can circulate has changed our thought processes and belief systems. This is an oversimplified description of a complex problem, but there's nonetheless some truth to it. 3/ A growing number of people are attracted to ideas that strike many others as preposterous. Without question, there have always been groups of people attracted to conspiracies and falsehoods. That's just humanity.

Interesting to hear people throwing out all the crimes being committed in Ottawa. I'm far less convinced. Mischief seems clear, but everyone suggesting that this is "clearly" a riot, unlawful assembly, causing disturbance or nuisance needs to look at those sections more closely. Let's take the "unlawful assembly" section as an example, since a lot of people want the Riot Act read. It requires proof that the peace was disturbed "tumultuously". There's very little jurisprudence on what this means, because this charge is rarely brought.

In writing about legal education this morning, I did a terrible job of keeping my tweets together. In a nutshell, I might be OK at online learning, but I suck at Twitter. @ericadams99 could even follow my tweets. So, I'm now going to post as a single "thread" - largely for him. I'm just going to focus on the "sessional" part, rather than the 10 advantages of online learning, though I may throw a few key points from there in too.

1/ All right. Here we go. This is going to be a long thread, so bear with me. I apologize in advance. Here are the results of the poll. 2/ My starting point: It should not be this confusing. This is a fundamental problem that arises regularly (more regularly with lots of affidavits required prior to trial for 276 and, unless struck down, 278.92). Everyone should be on the same page. We're not - because...