In an arbitral award dated July 17, 2015, arbitrator Christian Brunelle upheld a grievance alleging that a school board (the “Employer”) abusively exercised its rights in the way it handled a teacher’s disability insurance claim.
The Quebec government recently published the text of a draft regulation imposing a framework on information technology (IT) contracts entered into by public bodies.
The draft regulation was published at the same time as draft amendments to the three regulations currently governing supply contracts, services contracts and construction contracts entered into by public bodies.
This article constitutes the conclusion to our articles on CETA appearing in our last Infolettre.
Although the Canada – EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) contains some thirty (30) chapters covering a wide range of areas from goods and cross-border trade in services to intellectual property, sustainable development and the environment, it was very clear from the outset of negotiations that the EU was strongly interested in “substantially improved access to public procurement markets aiming to achieve full coverage of central and sub-central government procurement in all sectors.”
Since the coming into force of the Integrity in Public Contracts Act, there have been several developments regarding the requirement for business entities that wish to enter into a public contract or sub-contract, to obtain authorization from the Autorité des marchés financiers (the “AMF”), Quebec’s financial markets regulator.
The issue of reasonable accommodation has given rise to a wealth of literature and comment since it first entered the social and legal discourse of Canada and Quebec following the O’Malley decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1985. Often criticized, the requirement to reasonably accommodate differences nevertheless stems from the desire to protect the dignity and equality of individuals in matters of Canadian public law.
This article first appeared in French on the blog of Conseiller.ca on October 28, 2015.
This past May 20, I drew attention to the decision of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) in the Finkelstein case. To recap four investment advisors and a lawyer were found guilty of breaching Ontario’s Securities Act by engaging in illegal insider trading and disseminating privileged information regarding three reporting issuers.