CBA Influence - Public Policy and Advocacy

In normal times, official documents such as forms for GST or HST rebates on new home transactions require a “wet” signature – meaning the ink has to be on the form itself.

The integration of the North American economy is such that regulations affecting companies in one country are likely to affect parents or subsidiaries in another. That’s why the CBA’s Competition Law Section was happy to review draft Vertical Merger Guidelines published by the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission.

Nearly 30 years after ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the federal government, along with provincial and territorial governments, has still not passed legislation to incorporate the Convention into domestic law, thus denying children the full benefit of its protections.

A document laying out ethical principles for judges should be directive, not aspirational, say the CBA’s Judicial Issues Committee and the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee after studying the Canadian Judicial Council’s revised Ethical Principles for Judges.

In its consultation paper, A New Framework for Multi-employer Negotiated Contribution Pension Plans, the Finance Department proposes a new funding framework for those plans that would remove solvency funding requirements while maintaining going-concern funding and additional safeguards to uphold benefit security for members and retirees.

The election’s over, the federal cabinet has been named and the ministerial mandate letters have been published. Time for everyone to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Negotiating all of the emotional and practical implications of the dissolution of a marriage while trying to protect children as much as possible from the fallout is difficult enough without the Income Tax Act adding to the burden.

High-profile issues from the news of the past year are reflected in many of the nine resolutions that will be up for debate at this year’s CBA AGM, on topics ranging from protecting the role of the Attorney General to implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to using the notwithstanding clause.

Increasing access to justice through modernization and strengthening the Federal Court as a national institution are priorities laid out in the court’s proposed 2020-25 strategic plan that the CBA’s Federal Courts Bench and Bar Liaison Committee is pleased to support.

A transparent judicial process is essential to a properly functioning democracy, but there is something to be said for the “practical obscurity” of paper-based records and the privacy they offer, says a CBA working group looking at a Federal Court proposal to make court files available online.