News

Nearly 100 members answered the call this summer for candidates to sit on the Truth and Reconciliation Task Force created to develop CBA responses to the TRC’s Calls to Action that will help establish and maintain a mutually respectful relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.

The CBA Board of Directors voted at its June meeting to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Task Force to support the Association’s commitments to do what it can to advance the TRC's Calls to Action.

The Canadian Bar Association supports the American Bar Association’s statement opposing the current situation in the United States where children are being separated from their parents and being held in detention facilities.

It’s a common refrain – the federal government needs to move on filling the country’s judicial vacancies – a total of 63 as of Dec. 1, 2017.

The CBA’s Child Rights Committee has some ideas for what you can do to improve the rights of all Canadian children on Nov. 20 – National Child Day – and every other day of the year.

Three years of hard work by dozens of professionals across the country has culminated in the launch earlier this month of the CBA Child Rights Toolkit, a user-friendly resource for legal professionals and the general public.

CBA Sections are developing a number of toolkits to be released this spring that are meant for everybody but which may be of particular use to small and solo practitioners. The Child Rights Toolkit and the Collateral Consequences Toolkit are aimed at improving your practice, and the Successfully Parenting Apart Toolkit is something you can use to help clients.

Two new toolkits are coming this spring to help CBA members improve their practice. The first, presented by the CBA National Criminal Law Section, walks lawyers through the “collateral consequences” of a criminal charge and/or sentence for their clients. The second is a primer on children’s rights from the Children’s Law Committee.

We urge the government of Canada to immediately cease the immigration detention of unaccompanied minors, children, and families, in order to halt the significant harm to children. Children should neither be detained, nor separated from their parents as a result of the detention of their parents. Community-based alternatives to immigration detention should be implemented immediately to protect the best interests of children and children’s right to liberty and family life.