Politics of Land Developers and Development in the Toronto Region

Urban land developers are influential actors in the governance, planning, and transformation of urban land. Yet developers and the development industry are not well understood, and are seldom scrutinized critically in academic scholarship. This dissertation investigates the role of land developers in the governance and transformation of land at the urban-rural fringe in the Toronto region. Critical theories of property, land use conflict, planning, and urban geography illuminate social, spatial, and policy issues associated with the rapid transformation of land. Theories of interpretive institutionalism contribute richly to these urban theories by directing attention to the historical, economic, and cultural contexts within which state and non-state actors and institutions operate, and the importance of discourse, the roles of individual actors, and the flow of ideas across spaces and scales. Drawing on these theories, I carried out extensive case study research on suburban developers and land use conflict in an urban-rural fringe area of the Toronto region. I investigated ongoing relationships between developers and policy makers in the context of Ontario provincial greenbelt and growth plan legislation. I interviewed developers, municipal and provincial planners, civil society actors, and planning and development consultants. Drawing on these interviews, archival research, and media analysis, I show that the Toronto region development industry, as well as many individual developers and development firms, are in practice powerful governance actors, deeply influential to land use decisions and outcomes. The development industry downplays its power and influence, working hard to reframe its economic interests as public good interests. Developers exercise power in new and subtle ways, by operating as privileged governance partners through consensus-based consultations, and by maintaining close, interdependent personal and financial relationships with political leaders and decision makers. But developers are also wealthy corporate elites capable of exercising raw money power, often in response to, and at times generative of, land use conflict. This dissertation draws upon, in new ways, diverse theories that contribute to a greater understanding of the power of developers and the development industry over land use change

Protecting the Privacy of Canadians\u27 Health Information in the Cloud

This article presents results from a year-long research project reviewing health privacy issues in the cloud, funded by the Contributions Program of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC). Section I provides a brief primer on cloud computing and its applications in data-centric health research and health care. Section II reviews Canadian privacy and health privacy laws and how they apply to CSPs. Section III identifies privacy risks arising from the technological, organizational, and jurisdictional complexity of cloud computing. Section IV argues that Canadian health privacy laws fail to address difficulties custodians face in balancing responsibilities with CSPs, determining whether foreign laws offer comparable protection, and ensuring transparency is maintained as data migrates to the cloud. In Section V, we survey standard agreements (Terms of Service) and privacy policies of leading CSPs, arguing that cloud contracts do not sufficiently address gaps in legislative protection for privacy and security. In Section VI, we identify the discrepancies in Canadian laws that apply to PHI which threaten interoperability of cloud contracts across provinces. This review is the first comprehensive review of legal and contractual privacy protections in the Canadian health sector. By identifying potential gaps in protection, we aim to inform the business decisions and contractual practices of both custodians and CSPs in Canada. By identifying discrepancies across provinces, we also aim to stimulate cooperative reform and harmonization of health privacy governance across Canada

A Community of Procedure Scholars: Teaching Procedure and the Legal Academy

This article asks whether the way in which procedure is taught has an impact on the extent and accomplishments of a scholarly community of proceduralists. Not surprisingly, we find a strong correlation between the placement of procedure as a required course in an academic context and the resulting body of scholars and scholarship. Those countries in which more civil procedure is taught as part of a university degree — and in which procedure is recognized as a legitimate academic subject — have larger scholarly communities, a larger and broader corpus of works analyzing procedural issues, and a richer web of institutional support systems that inspire, fund, and shape the study of public justice

A Community of Procedure Scholars: Teaching Procedure and the Legal Academy

This article asks whether the way in which procedure is taught has an impact on the extent and accomplishments of a scholarly community of proceduralists. Not surprisingly, we find a strong correlation between the placement of procedure as a required course in an academic context and the resulting body of scholars and scholarship. Those countries in which more civil procedure is taught as part of a university degree—and in which procedure is recognized as a legitimate academic subject—have larger scholarly communities, a larger and broader corpus of works analyzing procedural issues, and a richer web of institutional support systems that inspire, fund, and shape the study of public justice