In this roundup, Annamaria Enenajor, Anthony Morgan, and Malcolm Lavoie – three alums from the class of 2012 – weigh in on current affairs, and Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne, DCL’96, signs an oped on aviation and sustainable development.
The courts aren’t the place to fight against cultural racism
Interview with Anthony Morgan, BCL/LLB’12, on CBC Radio’s The 180, Sunday, November 13, 2016
It may be 2016, but Canada’s courts and human rights tribunals are not ready to deal with matters of cultural racism.
That’s the message from Toronto lawyer Anthony Morgan.
Morgan says while he hopes that will change, right now the conversation about why instances of blackface, or the Cleveland Indians’ use of Chief Wahoo as a mascot, are racist and offensive have to happen elsewhere.
A lawyer himself, Morgan says there must be public conversations to create an understanding of the harm such things can cause. Read the rest of the article and listen to the interview.
Public interest outweighs privacy when police officers kill in the line of duty
By Annamaria Enenajor, BCL/LLB’12, The Agenda, TVO.org, Tuesday, November 22, 2016
When an agent of the state ends a human life, the public has a right to know why. The lack of transparency of agencies that oversee police conduct, including the SIU, must be remedied.
In April, the Honourable Michael Tulloch of the Ontario Court of Appeal was appointed to lead a review of the three independent agencies that oversee police conduct in the province: the Special Investigations Unit, the agency of the attorney general that investigates when an officer has been involved in an incident during which someone is injured, dies, or alleges sexual assault; the Office of the Independent Review Director, the civilian agency that oversees all public complaints about police in the province; and the Ontario Civilian Police Commission, a quasi-judicial body charged with ensuring police services are delivered fairly. Keep reading…
Cross-border beer and the case for in-Canada free trade
By Malcolm Lavoie, BCL/LLB’12. Battlefords News-Optimist, Friday, December 2, 2016
Free trade continues to be valued, as it was at Confederation, both for its economic benefits and its potential to promote Canadian unity.
What will become of the New Brunswick court case that promised to free the beer, along with other goods traded across provincial borders?
In April, provincial court Judge Ronald LeBlanc ruled that the effective ban on liquor purchased out of province was unconstitutional. His ruling cited Section 121 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which requires that goods from one province be “admitted free” into any other. Keep reading…
UN Sustainable Development Goals – The Aviation Connection
By Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne, DCL’96, Sri Lanka Guardian, Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Be a global citizen. Act with passion and compassion. Help us make this world safer and more sustainable today and for the generations that will follow us. That is our moral responsibility ~ UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
The accepted definition of sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
In a manner of speaking, one could say that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015 under the title Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to be implemented over 15 years, are an extension of the UN Millennium Development Goals which were adopted in 2000 to be implemented through to 2015. The Millennium Development Goals had, as their targets, extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability, and linked poverty to the other grave disadvantages mentioned above. Keep reading…