British Columbia Law Institute joins over 51 partners in Access to Justice BC’s Triple Aim 

On behalf of the staff and board at the BCLI, I am proud to announce that BCLI joins with 51 justice organizations today to sign the Access to Justice Triple Aim, committing to a common goal to improve access to justice in BC and to action to pursue that goal.   The Access to Justice Triple Aim is inspired by the health sector where the idea has been successfully used to promote innovation. Applied to BC’s justice Read more…

BC Court of Appeal remits matter of spouse’s entitlement to pension’s survivorship benefits back to trial judge

In a decision released last week, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia held that an earlier decision of the Supreme Court for British Columbia had failed to consider statutory and case authority in deciding not to reopen a family-law proceeding that had purported to establish separating spouses’ entitlement to pension benefits. The court remitted the issue back to the supreme court for determination. Kraft v Kraft, 2019 BCCA 204, involved a couple who married Read more…

New Caregiver Supports: Updates on the Care/Work Study Paper

The BC Law Institute’s study paper on Family Caregiving, Care/Work, was released in 2010. The need for and incidence of family caregiving is still high in BC. Since the report, there have been some additional supports created for family caregivers in BC and elsewhere in Canada, which will be highlighted below. However, there are still many areas in which caregiver supports could be enhanced or created, as suggested in the Care/Work report. Census Statistics There Read more…

Target-benefit plans and commuted-value transfer were the focus of the Pension Division Review Project Committee’s May 2019 meeting

The Pension Division Review Project benefits from having an expert project committee. At this month’s meeting, the committee’s attention was focused primarily on two topics: target-benefit plan design and commuted-value transfer. In very simple terms, target-benefit plans are pension plans that combine features found in both of the more-traditional plan designs: defined-benefit plans and defined-contribution plans. Legislation expressly addressing target-benefit plans first appeared in British Columbia in September 2015, with the coming-into-force of the new Pension Read more…

In cases concerning enforceability of positive obligations assumed by a prior owner against successors in title, BC Court of Appeal quotes BCLI Report on Restrictive Covenants, says it makes “compelling case for reform” but the reform must come from the legislature

BCLI’s 2012 Report on Restrictive Covenants was discussed with approval by the British Columbia Court of Appeal in two recent cases: The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 4006 v Jameson House Ventures Ltd, 2019 BCCA 144 and The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 3905 v Crystal Square Parking Corporation, 2019 BCCA 145. The cases were heard together and dealt with whether positive obligations purporting to be covenants that ran with title to the land could be enforceable Read more…