May 2023 Newsletter
May 4, 2023
BY Taja De Silva
A word from our Executive Director
Welcoming the Money Judgments Enforcement Act
BCLI work has been a regular feature of the BC legislature this spring! With the introduction of Bill 27 (the Money Judgments Enforcement Act) in the legislative assembly, the BC government has moved to implement recommendations from BCLI and the Uniform Law Conference of Canada, which will fundamentally reform an important area of civil law. A money judgment is an order of a court for a party to a lawsuit to pay another party a sum of money. Money judgments often go uncollected, frustrating successful litigants, because British Columbia’s system for enforcing money judgments is archaic, fragmentary, and inefficient. The Money Judgments Enforcement Act will remedy these faults, giving British Columbia a modern and integrated system for enforcing money judgments and making it easier for successful litigants to obtain payment of money owed to them. BCLI’s Report on the Uniform Civil Enforcement of Money Judgements Act was published in 2005 as the culmination of its project on money judgements.
Bill 27 comes shortly after another BCLI success, Bill 17, which implements recommendations from our 2021 Report on Pension Division: A Review of Part 6 of the Family Law Act.
Engaging the UBC Student Community
BCLI’s law reform recommendations report projects bring together lawyers and experts on a particular issue. These committees meet monthly over the course of a project – the work of these committees and the exchanges of ideas form the foundation for our law reform recommendations. It is where we see law reform in action!
Late last year, BCLI decided to invite Allard Hall law students to help us take notes of these committee meetings; it is a great learning opportunity for students and good notes are essential for our work. Over this past year, we’ve had the benefit of three contract student notetakers to support the work of our committees:
- Dan Lee is a 3L student at Allard Hall. He completed his undergraduate degree at Quest University and will be graduating from UBC Law in May 2023. Congratulations Dan! Dan has been taking notes for our Artificial Intelligence and Civil Liability Project Committee.
- Nonye Ngwaba is a 2L student at Allard Hall. She completed her undergraduate degree at McMaster University and will be graduating in May 2024. Nonye is the notetaker for our Parentage Project, which is reviewing the parentage provisions in part 3 of the Family Law Act.
- Celine Xu is a 2L student at Allard Hall. She completed her undergraduate degree at McGill University and will also be graduating in May 2024. Celine just joined us this spring and has been taking notes of the meetings of our Renovate the Public Hearings Project. She will continue to work with this committee over the summer.
We thank our Allard Hall student notetakers and look forward to continuing to engage students in our law reform projects in the fall term.
Welcoming Kira Davidson
We are pleased to welcome Kira Davidson to the BCLI as an Articling Student. Kira completed her BA in English Literature at the University of Calgary, her JD at the University of Alberta, and her LLM at the University of Edinburgh. We are excited to have Kira working on our Reconciling Crown Legal Frameworks program, among other things. She brings to the project experience as a writer for the UAlberta Faculty of Law’s blog, ReconciliAction YEG, where she wrote about reconciliation and Indigenous rights in Canada.
Karen Campbell Executive Director, BCLI
@kcvancouver
[email protected]
MAY 16 2023
Free Webinar: Supporting Vulnerable Victims and Witnesses
BCLI is pleased to be co-chairing this year’s full day CLEBC conference on legal research. Julia Lawn, BCLI board member and senior research lawyer with Nathanson, Schachter & Thompson LLP, and Megan Vis-Dunbar, BCLI staff lawyer, will co-chair this professional development seminar on October 17, 2023. Join lawyers, jurists, academics and law librarians as they discuss how AI and other emerging technologies impact various aspects of legal research. Learn some of the pitfalls to watch for and discover ways to use technology creatively to tackle some of the most challenging research problems. We hope you will join us in-person or online for what is sure to be an engaging discussion on the future of legal research.
For a full course agenda and to register, visit the CLEBC course page.
JUNE 3 2023
Wills & Estates Conference: BCLI’s Undue Influence Guide 2023: Tools and Strategies for Today’s Estate Planner
Staff Lawyer, Gregory Blue, KC, and BCLI Project Committee member, Geoff White, KC, will discuss BCLI’s Undue Influence Recognition and Prevention: A Guide for Legal Practitioners at the CBABC’s upcoming Wills & Estates Conference Practice Forward. Join us for a demonstration on how to apply our Guide and learn new strategies for dealing with potential undue influence in estate planning matters, including gifts and other property transfers, powers of attorney and more.
Register here to attend the CBABC’s Wills & Estates Conference on June 3.
The Artificial Intelligence and Civil Liability Project is approaching the consultation stage. The Project Committee has met monthly since November 2021 to develop a set of tentative recommendations to address major issues relating to the application of tort law to harm caused by artificial intelligence. A consultation paper is in the final stages of drafting.
The policy development phase for our Review of Parentage under Part 3 of the Family Law Act project is now complete. The project will be moving into phase three, its consultation phase, which will focus on the development of a consultation paper summarizing the results of policy development. We look forward to having new perspectives come together on the topic of parentage in future consultations.
Law360 Canada, formerly the Lawyers Daily, published an article about the “gigantic” task of making BC laws consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This article mentions the aim of our Reconciling Crown Legal Frameworks program, which is currently leading research on how to assist the Crown in implementing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).
| Kevin Zakreski BCLI welcomes pension division reforms |
