Verdicts & Voices

B.C. Supreme Court Justice David Masuhara may have been the first judge in Canada to encounter AI-generated fake citations. As he wrote at the time, “generative AI is still no substitute for the professional expertise that the justice system requires of lawyers.”

Two years later, the phenomenon certainly hasn’t gone away. So, there could hardly be a better guest for a discussion about the frequency of hallucinated citations, strategies for identifying them, and ways of dealing with lawyers and self-represented litigants who rely on them in court.

Check out these CBA resources designed to help lawyers use AI responsibly: 

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Views expressed are not necessarily those of the CBA.

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Canadian law societies require licensed lawyers to be of good character. But what does that mean? How is the requirement enforced? And can a person who sexually abused multiple children, and lied about it for years, still meet this standard?

Nadia Liva practices regulatory and disciplinary defence at Liva Freeman Dent LLP, with additional experience in criminal law. Ben Kates chairs the Regulatory Practice Group at WeirFoulds and previously acted as Discipline Counsel for the Law Society of Ontario.

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Views expressed are not necessarily those of the CBA.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Justice Minister Sean Fraser unveiled the federal government's latest bill to reform the criminal justice system last December, he said Bill C-16 would confront the rise in coercive control and intimate partner violence, and “keep kids safe from predators.” 

But will it actually live up to that goal?

The bill includes new mandatory minimum sentences, creates new criminal offences, and increases penalties for sexual crimes. It also seeks to avoid situations where charges get stayed due to excessive delays, but in a way that critics say could make delays even worse. 

For a discussion about the pros and cons of Bill C-16, Alison is joined by Melanie Webb, Chair of the CBA Criminal Justice Section and a criminal trial and appellate lawyer at Webb Barristers; and Simona Jellinek, senior counsel at Gluckstein Lawyers with 30 years of experience representing survivors of childhood abuse and adult assaults.

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Views expressed are not necessarily those of the CBA.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Quebec’s secularism law finally has its day at the Supreme Court next week, it will be a case for the ages. There will be dozens of interveners, six provinces and the federal government will be represented, and Ontario’s Attorney General will even make his argument personally. At issue are fundamental questions of individual liberties, religious freedom, gender equality, minority language rights – and whether pre-emptive use of the Charter’s notwithstanding clause bars the Court from wading into any of it.

For a preview of this potentially seismic legal reckoning, Alison is joined by the University of Alberta’s Eric Adams; the Université de Montréal’s Karine Millaire, who will be participating in the case on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists’ Canadian chapter; and Sahar Talebi of Lenczner Slaght in Toronto, who is representing the Canadian Council of Muslim Women.

Notes:

English Montreal School Board, et al. v. Attorney General of Quebec, et al.

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Views expressed are not necessarily those of the CBA.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Corinne Sparks of Nova Scotia was Canada’s first black woman judge. She was also the object of a racial bias complaint that reached the Supreme Court and stunted her career.

To mark the International Day of Women Judges, we’re replaying this July 2025 interview about it with Constance Backhouse, a legal historian at the University of Ottawa. Her latest book is Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges, and the RDS Case.

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Views expressed are not necessarily those of the CBA.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In 2016, when the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in R. v. Jordan, it called out a “culture of complacency” toward delays in Canadian court proceedings. The decision revolutionized Canadian criminal law, imposing strict timelines for bringing cases to trial: 18 months for provincial court, 30 months for superior court. If the timelines aren’t met, charges are stayed, and the accused can be released.

A decade later, some are pushing back, arguing Jordan is undermining trust in the justice system by causing guilty people to go free. And new federal legislation proposes to limit stays by having judges consider (undefined) alternative remedies, while taking into account factors such as impact on the victim.

One of the lawyers on the Jordan case was Tony Paisana, a partner at Vancouver’s Peck and Company and a former chair of the CBA’s Criminal Justice Section. In this episode, he recalls the history of the case, explores what’s happened since, and contemplates whether new legislative measures could make the culture of Canada’s criminal courts complacent once again. 

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Notes:

CBA submission about Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act

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Cops and lawyers are famously “separate but equally important groups” within the criminal justice system. Police officers often encounter the practice of law – lawyers, warrants, the witness stand – but what makes some of them join it? How do they manage the transition? And how does their policing background help or complicate their legal careers?

Louis-Philippe Thériault is a lawyer with McInnes Cooper in Moncton whose practice focuses on commercial and corporate law. He spent 12 years with the RCMP, working on patrol, general investigations, and financial crimes, and he’s a Major in the Canadian Army Reserves.

Alain Babineau spent 30 years in law enforcement, including with the Ontario Provincial Police, the Military Police, and the RCMP. Now, he's articling at the Ontario Bar Association. He has also done anti-discrimination work in Montreal, notably with the Office of the Commissioner for the Fight against Racism and Systemic Discrimination, the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, and the Red Coalition.

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On November 21, 2025, a Divisional Court judge ruled that the Black Legal Action Centre could intervene in a case before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The only problem? Twenty-four hours earlier, a different judge had made the opposite ruling.

How did that happen? How was the situation resolved? And what can we learn from it about different approaches to third-party intervention in Canadian courts?

Demar Hewitt is Executive Director and General Counsel of the Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC), a community legal clinic that is intervening at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal in Dosu v. York University.

Claire Boychuk practices labour, employment, and public law at RavenLaw in Ottawa. She is the author of Intervening in Canadian Courts.

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s been a rocky twelve months for the idea that countries’ actions should be governed by rules. Does that mean international law is dead? Was it ever alive? Or is it more relevant than ever?

Join two of Canada’s leading experts for a conversation that runs the gamut from tariffs to the ICC to Greenland to Davos to Venezuela and Caribbean drug boats, even a callback to Huawei and Meng Wanzhou, as they make the case that international law is real and necessary, whether it’s followed or not.

Gib van Ert practices public law and civil litigation at Olthuis van Ert in Ottawa and Vancouver and is an expert on the application of international law in Canadian courts. 

Joanna Harrington is Vice-Dean of the University of Alberta Law Faculty, a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Council on International Law, and a former member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Links:

• Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech at Davos
• CBA letter about responding to U.S. ICC sanctions with the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Canada’s Supreme Court will have a lot on its docket in the coming months, and friend of the pod Nadia Effendi is back to talk us through it. Among the highlights:

• Will the Court recognize a tort of family violence? (Kuldeep Kaur Ahluwalia v. Amrit Pal Singh Ahluwalia)
• Are the findings of Parliament’s Ethics Commissioner subject to judicial review? (Democracy Watch v. Attorney General of Canada)
• Can your dad be your lawyer? (Maxime Bergeron v. Assemblée parlementaire des étudiants du Québec inc., et al.)
• Was a Bloc Québécois candidate who lost by one vote entitled to a do-over? (Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné v. Directeur général des élections du Canada, Directeur du scrutin de la circonscription de Terrebonne, et al.)
• Who exactly do lawyers in class actions represent? (Québec Major Junior Hockey League, now doing business as Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League Inc., et al. v. Lukas Walter, et al.)
• What do tenants who back out of leases owe their landlords? (Aphria Inc. v. Canada Life Assurance Company, et al.)
• Has Facebook failed to get users’ meaningful consent to disclose their personal information to third parties? (Facebook Inc. v. Privacy Commissioner of Canada)
• How will the judges view Quebec’s secularism law and the province’s use of the notwithstanding clause? (English Montreal School Board, et al. v. Attorney General of Quebec, et al.)
• Can courts rule on a law’s constitutionality even if the notwithstanding clause has been pre-emptively invoked? (Government of Saskatchewan as represented by the Minister of Education v. UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity)

Verdicts & Voices is a legal current affairs podcast presented by the Canadian Bar Association. With her retinue of expert guests, host Alison Crawford keeps listeners up to date on news, views, and stories about the law and the justice system in Canada.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.