BCLI attends the 2022 Uniform Law Conference of Canada
September 9, 2022
BY Karen Campbell and Greg Blue
The BCLI was pleased to participate in the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s (ULCC) 2022 annual meeting held in Edmonton, Alberta from August 15 to 19, 2022. Karen Campbell, Executive Director of the BCLI and Greg Blue, Q.C., Senior Staff Lawyer attended the meeting as members of the BC delegation to the Civil Section of the ULCC. This was the first in-person conference that the ULCC has organized since 2019.
The ULCC is a government-supported organization that works to provide independent and informed analysis and recommendations for the harmonization and reform of federal, provincial, and territorial laws in Canada. The BCLI has been involved in the ULCC since the BCLI was first founded in 1997 and has participated actively in work that seeks to harmonize laws across Canada.
At the meeting, the ULCC Civil Section received interim reports on projects relating to general partnership law/joint ventures, charitable organizations, and defamation law in the internet age, amongst other legal topics. The section approved in principle the Uniform Gratuitous Crowdfunding Act – the Quebec civil law version of the Uniform Benevolent and Community Crowdfunding Act initially adopted by the Section in 2020.
In the past, the BCLI staff members and directors have served as Working Group members in many ULCC projects, and in some cases led the Working Group. Former BCLI Executive Directors Jim Emmerton and Kathleen Cunningham successively chaired the ULCC Working Group for the revision of the Uniform Vital Statistics Act. Former BCLI director Professor Joost Blom, Q.C. was the principal researcher for the Working Group on the Uniform Court Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act, while former Executive Director of the BCLI, the late Arthur Close, Q.C., served as a Past President of the ULCC and was its longest serving delegate.
