By Jacqueline Labine, 2L
“Canada 2020: The Future of Public Interest Law” was the 2011 theme for the annual Student Public Interest Network Legal Action Workshop (SPINLAW), held March 12, 2011 at the Faculty of Law.
Organized by students from the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall law schools, SPINLAW creates a forum for students, local activists and community members to share their experiences and perspectives on current social justice issues.
The first in a series of panels included a discussion of practical changes in the mental health legal community. Toronto is home to a large and growing population of individuals with mental health issues who face unique challenges in accessing legal services. Participants included Dr. Joaquin Zuckerberg, a University of Toronto professor, legal counsel at the Consent and Capacity Board, and a member of the Legal Aid Ontario Mental Health Law Advisory Committee; Steve Lurie, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association Toronto branch; and Jean Buie, in-house counsel at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. The panel focused on the challenges and barriers currently faced by mentally ill individuals in the legal system as well as practical and innovative changes that may be made to reform the current mental health legal system.
“Legal Obstacles to Environmental Activism in the Next Decade” was chaired by three compelling panelists. Sébastien Jodoin is lead counsel with the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law as well as the director of the Campaign to End Crimes against Future Generations. Jodoin encouraged us to take action to protect future generations and discussed the promise of international criminal law and sanctions for combating environmental externalities. Joanna Bull is the supervising lawyer with Waterkeeper’s Clean Water Workshop, a program dedicated to mentoring law students and providing legal tools to citizens fighting for clean water in their communities. Bull enthusiastically addressed systemic barriers to accessing information which impede participation in environmental decision-making. Ramani Nadaraha is counsel with the Canadian Environmental Law Association. Nadraha’s talk focused on the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPS) to dissuade environmental activism as well as the potential of anti-SLAPP legislation.
The Access to Justice panelists included Graeme Norton, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association Public Safety Project; Meryl Zisman Gary, a lawyer at Bakerlaw and founder of Stand York, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of and advocating for an end to the genocide in Darfur; and Kenn Hale, lawyer-director at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO). The panel highlighted various methods and strategies of funding public interest advocacy work.
The Polygamy and Women's Rights panel included Faculty of Law Professors Rebecca Cook and Anver Emon, and LLM student Jordan Palmer. The panelists provided their views of section 293 of the Criminal Code which criminalizes polygamy, and the current reference before the Supreme Court of Canada. The panelists illuminated tensions in the current debate regarding the constitutionality of the prohibition on polygamy, including its effects on normative understandings of the family and the regulation of marriage, polygyny's consequences for women, and multiculturalism’s role in the debate surrounding polygamy.
The Asper Centre presented a discussion of the Public Works Protection Act and the G20 summit. Panelists included lawyer Gerald Chan, who represents one of the individuals arrested and detained under this Act for failing to show identification to the police during the G20 summit. His client intends to sue the Toronto Police and the Ontario Government. Dan Abrahams is the immediate Past Chair of the OBA’s Public Sector Lawyers section and chaired a group in charge of the OBA’s submission to the Hon. Roy McMurtry’s review of the Act. In her role as deputy ombudsman of Ontario, Barbara Finlay is responsible for the daily operations of the Ombudsman’s office including the investigation and resolution of the 12,000 complaints per year from members of the Ontario public regarding the provision of provincial government services.
In the final panel series Naomi Metallic and Pamela Palmater collaborated on a presentation of the history of Aboriginal status legislation and the struggle to rid it of sexism, a struggle still not completed even after the McIvor Case and Bill C-3.
The keynote speaker, immigration lawyer Barbara Jackman, drew on her lengthy experience in immigration and national security law to comment on the current government’s anti-democratic treatment of both citizens and non-citizens. Jackman also spoke about the weakened role of the judiciary as a check on legislative power, and the government's attempt to pursue its policy at the expense of civil liberties.
Panelists provided attendees with forward-looking, energetic and inspiring insights into their fields. As a small token of appreciation to the panelists, SPINLAW made a donation to “The Secret Trial 5,” a crowd-funded documentary project about the use of security certificates in Canada.
