Has the CJPTA readied Canada for the Hague Choice of Court Convention?

This paper examines whether the Court Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act has readied Canada to adopt the 2005 Hague Choice of Court Convention. Reviewing the Hague Convention as well as previous and current law and cases on forum selection clauses in common law Canada, including the very recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in Douez v Facebook, yields two conclusions. First, there are existing interpretive challenges flowing from gaps in the CJPTA with respect to jurisdictional clauses that need to be addressed. Second, the principles governing forum selection clauses in Canada are largely consistent with those put forward in the Hague Convention and should not be perceived as obstacles to its adoption

Judicial Jurisdiction in International Cases: The Supreme Court\u27s Unfinished Business

While the shortcomings of the common law rules of private international law were being reformed by statute in England, Canadian law, left to judicial development, remained mired in nineteenth-century thinking. A much overdue reassessment was finally undertaken by the Supreme Court earlier this decade. In Morguard Investments Ltd. v. De Savoye and Hunt v. T & N plc the Court recast the common law rules on jurisdiction and the enforcement of foreign judgments to conform with its perception of the new world order and Canadian federal structure. It then proceeded to endow these rules with constitutional authority. Although the Court\u27s emerging restatements of private international law have generated a growing body of analysis, little attention has been paid to date to the Court\u27s review of the law on forum non conveniens in Amchem Products v. BCWCB, buried as it was in a case dealing with the more dramatic topic of anti-suit injunctions. The forum non conveniens aspect of the case is, however, of greater importance if we are to judge by the burgeoning lower court jurisprudence on that issue alone

Paysage et cadre de vie au Québec : réflexion sur une demande sociale émergente et plurielle.

Cet article dresse un bilan des préoccupations publiques québécoises envers le paysage en tentant de distinguer différentes formes d'intérêt : les phénomènes de découverte/ invention (art pictural paysager), de consommation (touristique) et de demande sociale de paysage (intérêt des populations pour révolution des paysages qui conduit à une attitude active). A travers un examen de ces différents phénomènes, les auteurs soutiennent que certaines conditions reliées à la connaissance, à la gestion et aux moyens de sensibilisation et de pression ne sont pas encore réunies au Québec. Néanmoins, la demande sociale est émergente, s'avère étroitement liée aux préoccupations environnementales et patrimoniales et est prise en charge par des mouvements associatifs aux intérêts diversifiés (environnement, patrimoine, ruralité, récréotourisme, etc.). De fait, bien que le paysage ne suscite pas, en soi, une demande sociale clairement exprimée, plusieurs initiatives locales et régionales témoignent de l'importance du paysage comme élément essentiel à un cadre de vie de qualité.This paper examines Quebec's public concerns toward landscape. Three forms of interest are distinguished: discovery/invention (landscape pictorial art), consumption (tourism), and social demands for landscape (interests expressed through active attitudes toward landscape evolution). The authors suggest that some prerequisites related to knowledge, planning practices, as well as public awareness actions are still needed in Québec. Nevertheless, the emerging social demand appears to be closely related to environmental or heritage concerns and is supported by associative movements that share various interests (environment, heritage, rurality, recreation tourism, etc.). In fact, although landscape does not arouse in itself a clearly expressed social demand, many local and regional initiatives attest to the importance of landscape as a determinant element for the quality of the living environment