Category: Legal News

On June 12, 2017, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin announced that she would be retiring from the Supreme Court of Canada on December 15, 2017. Justice McLachlin joined the SCC in 1989 after serving on the BC Court of Appeal and as Chief Justice of the BC Supreme Court. In 2000 she became the first woman to be named Chief Justice of the SCC, and she is now the longest serving Chief Justice. Prime Minister Trudeau remarked, “Chief Justice McLachlin’s judicial accomplishments are unparalleled in Canadian history. She has been a judicial leader and trailblazer for almost four decades. […] After 28 years at the Supreme Court of Canada, her contributions reach into every part of our law.”

Chief Justice McLachlin will be remembered for her effective leadership, her clear writing, and her court’s landmark decisions. As Chief Justice, McLachlin has often led her court to reach consensus, even in controversial cases such as Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, 2013 SCC 72. She has used the term “cultural genocide” to describe Canada’s treatment of First Nations, and she penned the first SCC case that recognized Aboriginal title, Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44. In her retirement announcement she expressed, “It has been a great privilege to serve as a justice of the Court, and later its Chief Justice, for so many years. I have had the good fortune of working with several generations of Canada’s finest judges and best lawyers. I have enjoyed the work and the people I have worked with enormously.”

We shall see who will be named the next Chief Justice and who will be elevated to the SCC. McLachlin’s place on the bench will be filled under the new Supreme Court of Canada Judicial Appointments Process introduced by the Trudeau government in August 2016. This is an open and transparent application process led by an Independent Advisory Board. The Board has a mandate to recommend “qualified, functionally bilingual candidates who reflect a diversity of backgrounds and experiences,” but it is not obligated to follow the convention of regional representation on the SCC. In the fall of 2016, Justice Malcolm Rowe became the first justice to be appointed to the SCC under the new process. Justice Rowe, the first SCC justice from Newfoundland and Labrador, replaced Justice Thomas Cromwell, the representative of Atlantic Canada, and so his appointment ultimately complied with convention.

You can find several of Chief Justice McLachlin’s publications in our library collection:

• The Canadian law of architecture and engineering – Beverley M. McLachlin and Wilfred J. Wallace. Call Number: KF2925 M34.
• British Columbia Court Forms (2^nd Edition) – Beverley M. McLachlin and James P. Taylor, Edited by Fred Irvine. Call Number: KEB140 M25 2005.
• British Columbia Practice (3^rd Edition) – Beverley M. McLachlin and James P. Taylor, Edited by Fred Irvine. Call Number: KEB535.4 A6M25 2006.
• A Canadian judgment: the lectures of Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in New Zealand, April 2003 – Edited by Andrew Stockley and David Rowe. Call Number: KE8244 M34 2004.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued its decision this morning (February 14, 2017)  in the Ontario Sixties Scoop class action.

The court held that the Federal Crown owed and breached a “common law duty of care to take reasonable steps to prevent on-reserve Indian children in Ontario, who had been placed in the care of non-aboriginal foster or adoptive parents, from losing their aboriginal identity” (Brown v Canada, 2017 ONSC 251, at para 85).

The full court decision is available on The Globe and Mail website and will be available on CanLII later this week.

An archived stream of the ceremonial sharing of the decision at the Native Child and Family Services of Toronto with the representative plaintiff Chief Marcia Martel is available for viewing here.

On February 1, 2017 the Federal Government announced that it would seek to negotiate a national settlement to the “Sixties Scoop litigation’. The full press release can be found on the Government of Canada’s website.

For more background information on the Sixties Scoop, below are a few items in UVic Libraries’ collection:

• A History of Adoption Law in Ontario, 1921 – 2015 (Chapter 9: Indigenous Children and Adoption) – Lori Chambers. Call number: KEO228 C53 2016 (Law Library)
• A Generation Removed : The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World (Chapter 6: The Indigenous Child Welfare Crisis in Canada)- Margaret Jacobs. Call number: HV875.6 J33 2014 (McPherson Library)
• Moving Toward Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare (Chapter 3: Aboriginal Child Welfare) – eds. Gary Cameron, Nick Coady, and Gerald R. Adams. Online
• A literature review and annotated bibliography on aspects of Aboriginal child welfare in Canada
  – Marlyn Bennett, Cindy Blackstock and Richard De La Ronde. Online.
  
• Stolen from our Embrace : The Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Aboriginal Communities – Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey. Call number: E78 C2 F675 (McPherson Library)
• Four Decades of Child Welfare Services to Native Indians in Ontario: A Contemporary Attempt to Understand the ‘Sixties Scoop’ in Historical, Socioeconomic and Political Perspective – Joyce Barbara Timpson. Online
• Governing Childhood (Chapter V: Therapies of Freedom: The Colonization of Aboriginal Childhood) – Anne McGillivray. Call Number: HQ789 G658 (McPherson Library)
• Richard Cardinal : Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child – National Film of Canada. Streaming video.
• Native Children and the Child Welfare System – Patrick Johnston. Call number: E78 C2 J63 (Law Library)
• No Quiet Place : Final Report Review Committee on Indian and Metis Adoptions and Placements – Edwin C Kimelman. Call Number: KF8210 C45 M36 1985 (Law Library)