John Bridal is the Associate Director in the Real Estate Division, Sauder School of Business at UBC. He is responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of the Division's distance education real estate courses. He is an Honours graduate from UBC with a Bachelor of Commerce in Urban Land Economics. He also holds a Master of Education from UBC. He is a member of the Real Estate Institute of BC and has been with the Property Assessment Appeal Board since February 2003.
That is not to suggest that the issues aren't important: achieving a pedagogically sound national competency evaluation would be a significant accomplishment for the profession, while having the wrong sort of evaluation would be detrimental to a wide-range of constituencies, including the public, prospective lawyers, law firms and law schools. More discussion and evaluation needs to occur to ensure that it is the former of these, not the latter, that happens.
Also in 2015 the Supreme Court issued Guindon v Canada, 2015 SCC 41 , which upheld a penalty imposed on Julie Guindon pursuant to section 163.2 of the Income Tax Act for providing flawed and misleading” advice to her clients, advice which was indicative either of complete disregard of the law and whether it was complied with or not or of willful blindness” (at paras 85-86, quoting the Tax Court of Canada's factual findings). The issue at the Supreme Court related to constitutional issues with section 163.2, but in upholding the severe penalty imposed on Ms. Guindon the Court effectively validated a scheme for regulating the quality and content of lawyer advising.
The quality and content of lawyer advising was also before the courts in September 2015, when the Federal Court heard Edgar Schmidt's request for a declaration that the Department of Justice has not properly advised the Minister about when Parliament must be told that proposed legislation is
The quality and content of lawyer advising was also before the courts in September 2015, when the Federal Court heard Edgar Schmidt's request for a declaration that the Department of Justice has not properly advised the Minister about when Parliament must be told that proposed legislation is
Lawyer not consistent with the Bill of Rights or the Charter (CBA National Magazine story, here ). Schmidt alleges that the Department has taken the position that legislation is only not consistent with the Bill of Rights or the Charter when it has a less than 5% chance of being upheld in Court.
Prime Minister Trudeau has said that the government will fully implement” the TRC's Calls to Action. If he succeeds in this ambition it would be a significant transformation for the Canadian legal system, one that would affect not just the training of Canadian lawyers, but also their resources, competencies and work environment, particularly those working in the criminal justice system.
