March 2012: the Plan Nord conference speakers and student organisers.

In one of the busiest months of the year at the Faculty, students organized a slew of events, including a conference about the Quebec government’s plans for developing the northern part of the province, a colloquium on InSite and Canada’s drug treatment policy, a conference on wrongful convictions and a panel discussion on the mental health crisis in the criminal justice system.

Plan Nord: Perspectives, Challenges, and Promises for Northern Indigenous Communities

The Aboriginal Law Students’ Association, Environmental Law McGill and the International Journal on Sustainable Development Law and Policy jointly organized a conference that took place at the Faculty of Law on Saturday, February 11.

The two panels took as their subjects “Local Contexts and Legal Framework” and “Plan Nord in Action: inclusion, consultation and participation in practice.”

Speakers included Professors Jaye Ellis and Colin Scott, Mr. Harry Tulugak, Aurélie Arnaud, Ugo Lapointe, Me. John Paul Murdoch and Chief Ghislain Picard. Professor Richard Janda moderated the first panel while Professor Kirsten Anker moderated the second.

The organizers would like to acknowledge their sponsors, the Law Students’ Association, the Hydro Quebec Fund for Sustainable Development Law, the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, the McGill Alumni Fund and Café Santropol for their contributions. Thanks also go out to the speakers and the volunteers from the Aboriginal Law Students’ Association, Environmental Law McGill and the International Journal on Sustainable Development Law and Policy for organizing the event.

Read more about the conference in NunatsiaqOnline and The McGill Daily.

First annual conference: Innocence McGill

Innocence McGill hosted its first annual conference on March 13 with a panel entitled “Wrongful Convictions: the Path to Proving Innocence,” chaired by the Honourable Patrick Healy of the Provincial Court of Quebec and featuring Mes Kerry Scullion and Robert Israel.

The conference covered Section 696 applications in detail, including the practical difficulties that convicted individuals face in filing such applications.

Said conference co-organizer Gjergji Hasa, “At Innocence McGill recently, we have been faced with cases where our clients lack procedural channels to prove their innocence after being found guilty by the Court of Appeal, for instance. If the convicted individual doesn’t have money to hire a private lawyer and he is not represented by a legal aid lawyer, this person might never be able to present his or her case before the Supreme Court… Is our system of justice failing in this regard? Should the government do something about this? This conference generated discussion about this issue and provided Innocence McGill volunteers with possibilities for ways to bring cases forward when faced with similar difficulties.”

Find out more about Innocence McGill at http://www.mcgill.ca/innocence/. Photos by Ke-Jia Chong.

McGill Law Journal Annual Lecture

See From the back rooms to the front lines for an interview with this year’s guest speaker, Mary Dawson.

McGill Journal of Law and Health

On Saturday, March 10, the McGill Journal of Law and Health held its annual student colloquium with the topic “Insight on InSite: the evolution of Canada’s drug treatment policy.”

The event featured Mr. Richard Elliot, Executive Director of Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Dr. Kathryn Gill, Direction of Research at the Addiction Unit of the McGill University Health Centre, The Honorable Libby Davis, MP for Vancouver East (NDP), Mr. Jean-Francois Mary, Cactus (Montreal NGO currently working to set up safe-injection sites), and Dr. Carole Morissette, Direction de la santé publique de Montréal.

Upcoming event: McGill Journal of Law and Health’s Continuing Legal Education Forum

The Journal will also be hosting its 3rd Annual Continuing Legal Education Forum on Wednesday, March 21, on the role of Public Private Partnerships (P3’s) in the modernization of Quebec’s healthcare system.

The goal is to provide legal professionals, healthcare practitioners, and students with a better understanding of the legal aspects underlying Quebec’s P3 model.

In exploring this topic, the forum will focus on the Redevelopment Projects of both McGill University Health Center and the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (commonly referred to as the Super-Hospital projects). The forum will be moderated by Professor Alana Klein of McGill’s Faculty of Law and will be bilingual.

Speakers include Andrew Ford, partner at Fasken-Martinaut, André Dufour, president of Groupe immobilier santé McGill at SNC-Lavalin, and Eric Michaud, director at Infrastructure Quebec.

The McGill Journal of Law and Health’s Continuing Legal Education Forum will take place March 21, 2012, 18h30-20h15, at Chancellor Day Hall,room NCDH 312-316, 3644 Peel Street, Montreal H3A 1W9.

The event will be followed by a wine and cheese reception. Admission is free. For further details, please contact manager.mjlh@mail.mcgill.ca.