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OTTAWA - Reforms in the federal budget bill that seek to clarify Canadas sanctions regime will actually have the opposite effect, warn The Canadian Bar Association and a lawyer helping firms navigate the rules.

From the perspective of assisting Canadian businesses doing business with Russia the legislation is flawed, in that it is incomplete and lacks clarity, saidWilliam Pellerin, an Ottawa-based trade lawyer with the firm McMillan LLP.

The Liberals are proposing changes that would specify which entities are barred from doing business with Canadians, such as companies that are 50 per cent or more owned by someone whom Ottawa has sanctioned.

While thatchange puts Canada in line with its allies, Pellerin argued many of theother proposals are too vague.

Maybe the governments intention here is to make the legislation unworkable for Canadian businesses. And if thats the case, then theyre accomplishing their objective, he said in an interview.

If, on the other hand, the purpose of the legislation is to provide clarity and ensure that Canadian businesses are competitive with their U.S. and EU counterparts, then the legislation fails.

Pellerin noted that another part of the bill targets foreigners who can direct a companys activities directly or indirectly, and through any means, which he said will be too difficult for companies to track.

The legislation also doesnt seem to clarify if an entity is barred when its ownership involves more than one sanctioned person who together pass the threshold of 50 per cent ownership, he said.

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In a brief to the House finance committee, the Canadian Bar Association said the current phrasing is highly subjective and may lead to inconsistent outcomes.

For example, if a sanctioned person has the ability to vote on the composition of a corporations board, or can appoint just one of 12 board members, that would likely bar the company from commerce with Canadians under the proposed amendments.

Pellerin noted that Britains legislation is more constrained, such that a company would only be affected if a sanctioned person holds 50 per cent of a corporations voting rights or the ability to control a majority of a corporations board appointments.

The new rules would create more uncertainty and penalize Canadian entities seeking to comply with rules that arent as clear as those in other countries, the bar association said.

The amendments do not increase the predictability and certainty of Canadas sanction regime. Rather, they cause further confusion and compliance challenges, its brief said, adding it demanded clarity long before the Liberals tabled their budget in late March.

To date, no guidance has been issued by Global Affairs Canada despite repeated and long-standing requests from the (association), trade lawyers and the business community, read the brief.

In a Friday statement, the department said it is closely reviewing the points raised by both Pellerin and the CBA.

The government of Canada is committed to mitigating the impacts of Canadas sanctions legislation on Canadas business community and supporting effective implementation of sanctions, wrote spokesman Grantly Franklin.

He added that the proposed changes aim to clarify certain provisions, make processes more efficient, increase information-sharing and tighten Canadas sanctions regime.

Pellerin assists companies navigate Canadian sanctions, particularly involving Russia. At times, that includes global mining or energy corporations that have worked for years in both countries, given their similar terrain.

Other clients are finding it hard to do business even with companies that sit far away from Russia, he said, such as in Gulf states. They might only learn those companies are partly owned by a Russian oligarch when a transaction gets blocked.

No one wants to see Russia succeed with its further invasion of Ukraine. I think thats a key point here, he stressed.

Less-contested changes in the bill involve making permanent the ongoing temporary withdrawal of Russia and Belarus from preferential tariffs, meaning goods from those countries would remain subject to a 35 per cent tariff.

The amendments would also clarify that an unused law to forfeit sanctioned assets can be used against all sanctioned people and not just those who are Russian citizens, and broaden the phrasing of sanctions law to include not just goods but property in general.

The bill would also allow Canada to sanction foreigners who are citizens of countries that Ottawa hasnt yet targeted for sanctions.

Currently, the government must undertake a regulatory process to add a country to the sanctions regime if any of its citizens are to be sanctioned. It has had to undertake that process in order to target Moldovans who have assisted Russias war effort.

The amendment would allow Canada to list any non-Canadian without assessing an entire country. This means it could, for example, sanction an American who aided Moscow.

There has been a historic uptick in the number of individuals and corporations Ottawa has sanctioned recently in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine, as well as to human-rights crackdowns in Iran and gang violence in Haiti.

This week, the Senates foreign-affairs committee called on Ottawa to clarify the reasons it issues sanctions and improve the ways it assesses whether financial embargoes and travel bans are actually working.

The senators called for more transparency around the obligations of Canadian businesses, how Ottawa chooses who to target and what people can do to appeal sanctions.

The senators noted that Canada provides less guidance than its allies on how companies are supposed to follow the rules, though some of the budget bills measures would address that concern.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 19, 2023.

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Lawyers argue Liberals proposal to clarify sanctions regime does the opposite - Toronto Star

In an effort to defend Canadas disastrous safer supply drug strategy, Associate Health Minister Carolyn Bennett, who is responsible for the program, has cited a new study, which suggests that safer supply actually works. However, the research referenced by the minister is, according to experts, of low-quality. No responsible politician should use it to guide high-stakes addiction policy.

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The MySafe program is a safer supply initiative that has used vending machines to dispense opioids since 2020. The evaluation argues that the machines have been a qualified success and that, while nearly every study participant continued using illicit drugs, they used less, experienced fewer overdoses, were more financially secure and reported improved health.

That sounds great, except theres a catch: these findings are so flimsy that its difficult to draw any firm conclusions from them.

The MySafe evaluation is a qualitative study, meaning that, rather than crunching hard data, it relies on semi-structured interviews with 46 individuals who had used MySafe for at least one month. These interviews were gathered in late 2021 and early 2022, and then interpreted and summarized by the studys authors.

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While qualitative studies may be acceptable in other fields, using them to guide policy and practice is unthinkable in most health care settings, especially when peoples lives are at stake.

Dr. Sharon Koivu, an addiction physician with the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), says that qualitative research is unreliable because it is vulnerable to being manipulated by researchers, who can control the results that are generated using this method.

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Safer supply programs involve the use of a potent opioid which has significant risks and dangers. They require studies consistent with the higher standards of pharmaceutical research, said Dr. Koivu, who believes that higher quality evidence, such as randomized control trials, should be used to investigate safer supply.

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According to both doctors, the study failed to address the fact that those interviewed for the study had extremely strong financial incentives to prolong their access to safer supply opioids, which are often sold on the black market for profit.

There is no way to evaluate the accuracy or truthfulness of participants responses, said Dr. Somers.

Dr. Koivu said that, throughout her long career of studying drug-related infections, she has found that patients lie to researchers out of fear of losing access to their preferred drugs.

When asked about how the CMAJ study compares to other research that supports safer supply, Dr. Koivu said, Essentially all studies on safer supply are qualitative. They rely heavily or exclusively on self-reporting. There is no attempt to ensure the authenticity of the reporting.

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Yet the CMAJ study is more concerning than most, because not only does it rely on weak and unreliable qualitative data, its very design is inadequate.

Similarly, Dr. Somers said that the studys interview questions seemed to avoid broaching topics which could reflect poorly on safer supply for example, the study included no questions exploring the well-documented problem of pimps, abusive spouses and drug dealers confiscating opioids from vulnerable safer supply recipients.

Both doctors noted that the study made no attempt to compare safer supply with other evidence-based addiction interventions.

Due to privacy concerns, the transcripts from the interviews gathered for the MySafe evaluation are not available to the public only a small number of excerpts have been shared in the final report, making it impossible to properly evaluate the study.

National Post

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Adam Zivo: Liberals rely on poor quality research to defend safer supply - National Post

OTTAWA - Experts say a Liberal bail reform bill introduced this week could be subject to a Charter challenge and see limited results.

The bill aims to make it harder for some repeat violent offenders to seek pretrial release by putting the onus on them to prove why they should be granted bail.

Danardo Jones, an assistant professor at the University of Windsors law school, says he isnt sure the bill would hold up under legal scrutiny. The Supreme Court has cautioned governments before on any expansion of what are known as reverse-onus measures.

Its making a lot of changes that Im not certain will pass constitutional muster, he said.

The legislation would introduce reverse-onus bail conditions for people charged with serious violent offences involving a weapon, in cases where the person was convicted of a similar violent offence within the past five years.

It would also add some firearms offences to existing reverse-onus provisions, and expand their use in cases where the alleged crimes involve intimate partner violence.

Prosecutors in such cases would no longer have to prove to judges why offenders should stay behind bars.

Justice Minister David Lametti had promised that any new law would abide by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees that anyone who is charged with a crime will not be denied reasonable bail without just cause.

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The Supreme Court has affirmed that right several times, including in R v. Morales, a 1992 case in which justices decided that bail is not denied for all individuals who pose a risk of committing an offence or interfering with the administration of justice while on bail.

Bail is denied only for those who pose a substantial likelihood of committing an offence or interfering with the administration of justice, and only where this substantial likelihood endangers the protection or safety of the public, that decision says.

Moreover, detention is justified only when it is necessary for public safety. It is not justified where detention would merely be convenient or advantageous.

Jones said a court wont be swayed by any of the political rhetoric that has driven discussion around the latest bail reforms, which come after months of public pressure on the federal government to act from premiers, police and opposition parties.

Their approach is going to be more principled, and more in line with ensuring that our constitutional values are respected and that the integrity of our Constitution is not in any way eroded, he said.

From the face of this bill, Im concerned that we are seeing public safety perhaps outweighing civil liberties.

Since 2019, the federal justice minister has been required to ensure that a Charter Statement is available for every bill tabled by the government to help identify any potential effects a law may have.

No statement is yet available for the bail-reform bill, Lamettis office said.

But he maintains the law introduced is Charter-compliant.

We need to strike a balance, the justice minister said at a news conference Tuesday. We think weve done that here, working in the range between the Charter rights and public security and public safety.

With statements like that, Jones said, Lametti is signaling that they know the court is to be concerned about striking an appropriate constitutional balance.

Queens University sociologist Nicole Myers said the impact of the new law could be limited because the measures dont address the root causes of crime.

Everybody is interested in public safety and improving public safety, said Myers, who has an expertise in bail and pretrial detention.

To do that, then we have to do the difficult things. We need to invest much more into the root causes of crime and to preventing crime from happening in the first place.

She said there needs to be more investment in education, health care, mental health, substance use, poverty and homelessness.

Myers said she doesnt agree with reverse onus provisions.

If the state wants to make arguments why somebody should be detained, the state should bear the onus of demonstrating why someone should be detained rather than an accused person demonstrating why they ought to be released, she said.

Jones and Myers both said they are also concerned that the prospective new law could disproportionately affect populations that are already overrepresented in Canadian prisons, such as Black and Indigenous people.

Theres already disproportion with the constitutional safeguards in place, said Jones.

Removing them or eroding them will only stand to increase that disproportionality.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 17, 2023.

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Liberals new bail reforms could run up against Charter, have limited impact: experts - Toronto Star

Two members of parliament, who quit as Liberals citing concerns about a lack of transparency on the part of the Tasmanian government, have given a radio interview in which they gave very little away about how they'll play their hands when parliament returns next week.

John Tucker and Lara Alexander held a media conference to announce their resignations from the Tasmanian Liberals last Friday, and followed it up with media interviews early in the week.

They were then silent for several days.

They broke that silence at 5pm yesterdaywith an interview on ABC Radio Drive.

Unlike the interviews they gave at the time they announced their resignations, this time they had very little to say.

The government, which was plunged into minority after losing the two backbenchers, is now in a precarious situation.

Premier Jeremy Rockliff, however, says he is "confident" he would survive a motion of no confidence in parliament.

He said he had been having "productive discussions" with Mr Tucker and Ms Alexander throughout the week.

"I believe I have the support of Lara and John," he said on Friday.

But while the "productive discussions" appear to have left Mr Rockliff feeling confident about surviving a motion of no confidence something Labor has flagged its intention to bring on when parliament sits on Tuesday the details of those discussions are anybody's guess.

Mr Tucker said he and Ms Alexander had been "working cooperatively with the premier and we'll be making a comprehensive statement in the near future".

He repeated that line five times, in response to questions about whether the premier had his support and whether he would support the state budget aspects he was willing to confirm a week ago.

He repeated the second part of that that a comprehensive statement would be made in the near future, twice more.

Ms Alexander said at 5pm on Friday "right now at this time of the day it's probably not the right time to discuss any details" of the pair's discussions with Mr Rockliff.

"It's very difficult for me to go into the specific details, but, having said that full transparency and of discussions and that will be made very clear when the time comes," she said.

Mr Tucker previously said he wouldn't support or instigate a motion of no confidence, and Ms Alexander said a week ago that she wouldn't instigate such a motion, but she didn't rule out supporting one brought by someone else.

She told ABC Hobart Drive a week later that "if the vote of no confidence in the premier is going to destabilise the government, well, obviously it's not what we're about and it's a bit difficult now to talk about hypothetical motions as well, or anything that will come forward next week".

Her position on the budget has also been something of a mixed bag, initially saying she would guarantee supply, then that she would vote against a budget that included funding for the Macquarie Point stadium, then in the most recent interview that "we will need to have a little bit more of a discussion there around the stadium funding".

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Mr Tucker diverted from his script to say "I haven't seen the budget so I'm not prepared to make a statement until I've seen the budget".

It's not clear whether the two new independents will provide the details of their discussions with Mr Rockliff and what may or may not have been agreed to before parliament returns on Tuesday.

Ms Alexander and Mr Tucker's evasive answers on radio prompted text messages from listeners who questioned why they even went on radio.

Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O'Connor said Mr Tucker and Ms Alexander had a responsibility to to the Tasmanian people to be up-front about their discussions with the premier.

"It's odd that you might effectively blow up a government over transparency concerns, and seven days later not have been transparent about your negotiations with the premier of a minority government," Ms O'Connor said.

"To leave it to the day before parliament or on the floor of the house is untenable and we don't think it's particularly honourable. We're seven days in now, it is more then enough time now we need to hear what it is."

Some skerricks of information did drop out during Friday's radio interview, however. Ms Alexander said she had not seen the deal the government has signed with the AFL something she has been calling for.

She also said it had been a "very difficult week".

Mr Tucker said he would "never say never" when asked if he would return to the Liberal Party.

Ms Alexander said she had no intention of doing so.

They both said they believed they would be able to ask questions during parliamentary question time. They both said they had not been offered the Speaker of the House role.

Mr Tucker also said he had received during the week a briefing on the Marinus link project.

His concerns about that project were among the reasons he cited for quitting the party.

He said that briefing had raised more questions for him.

A week on from the bombshell resignations, however, Tasmanians are left wondering as the two new independents hold their cards close to their chests.

Set the ABC News website or the app to "TasmaniaTop Stories"from either the homepage or the settings menu in the appto continue getting the same national news but with a sprinkle of more relevant state stories.

Here's a taste of the latest stories from Tasmania

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Rogue MPs who plunged Tasmanian Liberal government into minority stay mute ahead of budget - ABC News

Derision rose from the floor as Pesutto took to the stage to deliver a speech on Saturday at the Liberal Partys state council in Bendigo, where he urged the party to unite and focus on the Andrews government ahead of Tuesdays state budget.

Supporters of Moira Deeming at the Liberals state council on Saturday in Bendigo. Penny Stephens

But the meeting was overshadowed by a group of party members wearing Deeming masks, who yelled Shame, shame as dozens of others many of them from Deemings Western Metropolitan electorate left the room before Pesuttos speech.

In response to the walkout, many of Pesuttos supporters rose to their feet to cheer the leader in an attempt to drown out his critics.

Liberal MPs broadly dismissed the walkout and talked down any immediate threat to Pesuttos leadership.

However, several federal and state MPs, who spoke to The Age on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party matters, , particularly if Deeming proceeds with her threat of defamation action against him.

The unrest came just over a week after the parliamentary Liberals voted 19-11 to expel Deeming from their team after she to challenge her nine-month suspension.

and lost her position as upper house whip after attending , that was .

After Saturdays walkout, Pesutto urged more than 300 members who stayed inside the conference room that the party had to remain disciplined and focused.

Whatever we might say about the Labor Party, whatever criticisms you might level, they have kept it together in terms of focus and discipline, he said.

The Victorian Liberals have voted to expel Moira Deeming from the party room during a 90-minute meeting of MPs this morning.

We can win, people want us running the state, but we have to believe in ourselves.

Outside the venue, party members who walked out, including Ross Kroger, Noelle Mason and Maria Cagalj, told The Age Pesuttos actions in supporting the expulsion motion against Deeming were disgraceful and disgusting, and called for him to be replaced.

To have her expelled, its disgusting," Mason said.

John Dunn, a Liberal member for 40 years, said he wrote to Pesutto and called on him to apologise.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto arrives at the meeting in Bendigo on Saturday. Penny Stephens

I know many Liberals are very upset and my only hope now is that you have not destroyed the Liberal Party, he wrote in the letter seen by The Age.

Pesuttos critics also said their anger at him was shared by some federal MPs, and cited .

Senator Sarah Henderson addressed members after Pesutto, and called on the party to expel Prime Minister Anthony Albanese from office, which was widely interpreted as a rebuke of state Liberals decision to expel Deeming.

As a strong and united team which respects our individual freedoms, including the freedom of speech and freedom to be our best selves our broad church working together with you, we can do this, Henderson said.

Pesutto didnt address the Deeming scandal in his speech, and instead made an early election commitment to hold a comprehensive review of the states tax system which would include a review of stamp duty and payroll tax.

He also promised to reinstate a Victorian version of the productivity commission if elected in 2026.

After his speech, Pesutto played down the walkout by more than two dozen members and said he was moved by the standing ovations from supporters.

If there were people that had different views, thats a matter for them, but what I saw was a strong endorsement to my commitment to reforming the party, he said. I was overwhelmed by the strong support in the room.

Senator Sarah Henderson called on the party to expel Anthony Albanese from office in her address. Penny Stephens

Privately, some of his colleagues fear Deemings defamation action will ultimately cost him his job by causing a distraction in the lead-up to the 2026 state election.

One MP said: Labor will weaponise both the bullying and defamation claims, and he wont ever be an effective opposition ... in the longer term he might have to consider an orderly handover.

Pesutto greets federal Liberal MP Dan Tehan at the conference. Penny Stephens

Federal Liberal MPs Dan Tehan, Jane Hume and James Paterson also attended the conference with the majority of state MPs and Victorian Nationals leader Peter Walsh.

As MPs and grassroots members arrived at the conference, Deemings supporters handed out copies of a newspaper article in which the MP declared in an interview she wont go quietly.

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Shame, shame: Opposition Leader John Pesutto booed at state council meeting - The Age