ARCTIC OBITER

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2 | <strong>ARCTIC</strong> <strong>OBITER</strong> THE LAW SOCIETY OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORIES Main Floor 5004 – 50 th Avenue P.O. Box 1298 Yellowknife, NT X1A 2N9 TEL: (867) 873-3828 FAX: (867) 873-6344 info@lawsociety.nt.ca www.lawsociety.nt.ca PRESIDENT Shirley Walsh VICE-PRESIDENT Michael Hansen SECRETARY Erin Delaney TREASURER Sheila MacPherson LAY MEMBER Maureen Crotty Williams INSIDE 3 Law Society President’s Message 4 Executive Director’s Message 5 Membership News 8 NWT Decision Digest 11 NWT Legislative News 12 Supreme Court of Canada Update 13 Notices P.O. Box 1985 Yellowknife, NT X1A 2P5 TEL: (867) 669-7739 FAX: (867) 873-6344 cbanwt@lawsociety.nt.ca www.cba.org/NorthWest EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Linda Whitford linda.whitford@lawsociety.nt.ca ADMINISTRATION & MEMBERSHIP INQUIRIES Amy LeBlanc amy.leblanc@lawsociety.nt.ca EDUCATION & COMMUNICATIONS Ben Russo ben.russo@lawsociety.nt.ca PRESIDENT Janice K. Walsh VICE PRESIDENT Elaine Keenan Bengts SECRETARY / TREASURER Malinda Kellett PAST PRESIDENT Sheldon Toner ELECTED VOTING MEMBER Betty Lou McIlmoyle NON-VOTING MEMBER Sheila MacPherson Arctic Obiter is a joint publication of the Law Society of the Northwest Territories and the Northwest Territories Branch of the Canadian Bar Association. It is published on a monthly basis to keep lawyers practicing in the NWT informed of news, announcements, programs and activities. Comments, articles and photos for consideration can be submitted to Ben Russo. Past and current issues are available on the Law Society website. 14 Upcoming Events 15 Resources FROM THE EDITOR Yet another busy month has passed us by. The regular chaos this office sees in March was enhanced by the exciting opportunity to promote the Northwest Territories in other jurisdictions. Exciting indeed. On April 16th, the Law Society and the Government of the Northwest Territories are jointly hosting a reception at Canada’s Northern House in Vancouver. This Olympic building is closing, but not before a final party for all lawyers in the area. If you’re in Vancouver, make a point to stop by that evening - see page 9 for details. As part of the preparations, the Law Society has come up with a promotional booklet as a companion to the DVD the Government released in 2007. If you would like copies of this 20-page overview of the legal profession in the North, we’d be happy to ship some your way. It will also be available online shortly (watch the weekly bulletins). Keep an eye out for future events. This is just the start. Cheers, - Ben
MARCH 2010 | 3 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE FLSC Semi-Annual Meeting March 18th to the 20th was the Federation of Law Societies semi annual meeting. This year it was held in Toronto and I attended with Linda Whitford, Erin Delaney and Lou Sebert. The day and a half of meetings were packed with information, compelling speakers and extremely interesting topics which are important to our profession and those we serve. Among the topics which were discussed was how the regulation of our profession should and will change as our profession becomes more global and more services are developed which take over many areas of today’s general lawyer’s practice. Services such as title insurance are carving away at the types of real estate transactions a lawyer will handle. In some jurisdictions in Canada, refinances are handled completely by banks and title insurers without the involvement of Shirley A. Walsh a lawyer. Paralegals are handling more and more files which were once solely the purview of lawyers, and in Ontario paralegals are now governed by the Law Society of Upper Canada. And increasingly, global, primarily low-cost but competent lawyers in foreign countries are performing routine legal tasks for local (Canadian) clients at massive cost savings. The trend seems to be that these types of changes are increasing (although they will likely take longer to get to the Northwest Territories than to Toronto or Vancouver), and we need to be prepared to address the practice and regulatory amendments that will accompany the changes. A large portion of the Friday afternoon meetings was taken up by the discussion of the future harm exception to confidentiality in the proposed national code of conduct. I sat on a panel with Sheila Greene, a member of the executive for Newfoundland and Labrador, and Gérald R. Tremblay of the Barreau du Québec and we were given two scenarios where we had to decide whether to break confidentiality based on our existing codes of conduct. We had three different answers for each scenario because our codes are not the same – in fact, there are very striking differences nationally. A new uniform rule is desired, however the difficulty is where to draw the line on what constitutes a justifiable reason to report information obtained from a client. Future crime? Imminent bodily harm to an individual? Is there a threshold of possible financial loss to an innocent third party that could trigger a future harm exception (i.e. a Bernie Madoff type situation) and is that a sliding scale? It was a very interesting discussion with no clear resolution and more work is being done to determine the best wording for this public safety that will also protect the fundamental legal and civil right of solicitor-client confidentiality. Saturday’s presentations were extremely interesting with presenters from the International Bar Association, the Canadian Bar Association, the Department of Justice Canada and others regarding their experiences with assisting developing Bars in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and China. The presentations highlighted the need in countries where the rule of law is still being developed and how we can help very easily and in ways that don’t involve traveling to those jurisdictions. These few paragraphs cannot do justice to the amount of interesting information that was presented during the conference. If anyone would like more information, or a copy of any of the materials which we obtained, please contact me or the law society office.
Page 1: ARCTIC OBITER MARCH 2010 V OLUME XI
Page 5 and 6: MARCH 2010 | 5 MEMBERSHIP NEW MEMBE
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Page 9 and 10: MARCH 2010 | 9 was a young teenager
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Page 13 and 14: MARCH 2010 | 13 NOTICES The Supreme
Page 15 and 16: MARCH 2010 | 15 RESOURCES The Law S

ARCTIC OBITER

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