Articles 2023

Following are this week’s summaries of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of March 6, 2023.

KPIs are key to managing organizational effectiveness and efficiency. KPIs can sometimes result in undesirable regulatory outcomes when they are conflated with organizational objectives. KPIs are a tool to help make decisions, allocate resources, identify problems and build accountability. By taking a sophisticated and thoughtful approach to KPIs, public sector bodies can achieve these purposes without the KPIs themselves inadvertently steering the organization down the wrong path.

There is a proliferation of news reports of people with disabilities considering medical assistance in dying (MAiD). As a human rights lawyer, a disability advocate, and a woman born with a disability, I find these trends troubling. I believe MAiD is the outcome of Hobson’s choice, which refers to the illusion that multiple options are available. In a “take it or leave it” scenario, “leaving it” is no longer tenable for many Canadians with disabilities, given today’s climate.

Since the release of the TRC report in 2015, momentum has been building toward Indigenous justice and reconciliation. But stronger and deeper commitments and actions are necessary.

The article discusses the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Flores v Glegg (2022 ONCA 825).

In Rovi Guides, Inc. v. Bell Canada, 2022 FC 1388, Justice Lafrenière adjudicated a trial involving the infringement and invalidity of four patents relating to interactive television programming guides—the kind of technological features that many of us rely on to enhance our television viewing. However, this decision may have dramatic effects on the prosecution of patents before the patent office.