Come article with us!

May 12th, 2015 by Iler Campbell

We’re currently accepting applications for the 2016 – 2017 articling year. We’re looking for like-minded, progressive people to join our team. Please submit your application (including cover letter, resume, reference letters and copies of your transcripts) by Friday, July 3 to [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!

Why carding is back: Toronto Police lack effective civilian oversight

April 30th, 2015 by Brian Iler

This post was first published on rabble.ca

Carding, the infamous police practice of stopping individuals for questioning, is back with a vengeance in Toronto.

Its devastating impact on the lives of thousands of Torontonians is vividly and brilliantly illustrated by Desmond Cole’s piece in this month’s Toronto Life: “The Skin I’m In: I’ve been interrogated by police more than 50 times — all because I’m black.”

A 2010 exposé by the Toronto Star showed that carding was in widespread use, and inflicted on Black people at disproportionately high rates.
Continue reading “Why carding is back: Toronto Police lack effective civilian oversight”

Access to justice crisis: 15 years too long to wait for solutions

March 26th, 2015 by Celia Chandler

We have all heard about Canada’s increasingly underfunded legal aid programs, escalating private market legal costs, and the scarcity of lawyers, especially in smaller, rural and remote communities. This has resulted in what many have termed an access to justice crisis. Indeed, the Canadian Bar Association has set targets for 2030 to equalize access to civil justice, as reported in this column in August 2013. The Toronto Star recently reported on programs in New York City, Windsor, and England and Wales where Self-Represented Litigants (SRLs) get support from students and other advisers who are not lawyers but have some training to find their way through the system — significant in those jurisdictions. But 2030 is 15 years down the road and a long wait for large‑scale system change; in the meantime, we have to live with the significant negative consequences to the legal system.

Read more on rabble.ca

CRTC levies $1.1 million fine for violation of Anti‑spam legislation

March 24th, 2015 by Shelina Ali

Earlier this month, the Canadian Radio‑television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC’s) Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, issued a hefty penalty of $1.1 million dollars to Compu‑Finder for failing to comply with Canada’s anti‑spam Legislation that came into force in July of 2014 (commonly referred to as CASL).   The penalty was issued with respect to four alleged violations between July 2014 and September 2014.

Compu‑Finder is a Quebec based training company with a long history of sending unsolicited commercial emails. The CRTC reported that complaints about Compu‑Finder accounted for 26% of those submitted that related to training companies. Continue reading “CRTC levies $1.1 million fine for violation of Anti‑spam legislation”

Options for Homes celebrates official opening of 341 affordable housing unit project

March 23rd, 2015 by Iler Campbell

Options for Homes celebrated the official opening of their Cranbrook Village condo project on Friday. The building, just north of Bathurst St. and Lawrence Ave. is comprised of 341 units which thanks to Option’s innovative financing model were sold for significantly below market value.

City councillor, Ana Bailão and Member of Parliment, Adam Vaughan were present to celebrate. The City of Toronto contributed funds to make 94 of the building’s units even more affordable. Vaughan lamented on Twitter that the federal government was not a funder of the project and had actually made money from it.

Options’ innovative model provides loans to condo purchasers to boost their down payment by 13% or more of the purchase price. The loan is repayable as an equivalent percentage of the sale price when the condo is sold. Those proceeds then go towards the construction of more affordable housing.

We’ve had the great fortune to be partners with Options from their very beginning.

Read more about Options in our profile of them. Check out what Anna Bailão had to say about the event here and catch up on Adam Vaughan’s tweets (including a picture of Shelina and Brian) here.

The Pope on co-ops

March 4th, 2015 by Iler Campbell

In a speech last Saturday, Pope Francis praised co-operative organizations, saying that “the foundation of new cooperative enterprises, along with the further development of those already in existence” should be a “first place” priority of society. Co-operatives, he said,  should “continue to be the motor for lifting up and developing the weakest part of our local communities and of civil society”. In co-operatives, he said, “capital does not rule over people, but people over capital.”

He called for “creative imagination to find forms, methods, attitudes and tools to combat the throwaway culture cultivated by the powers that support the economic and financial policies of the globalised world.”

Hear, hear!