BCLI Participates in Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s 2025 Annual Meeting
September 22, 2025
BY Greg Blue
Representatives from BCLI customarily attend the Annual Meeting of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada (ULCC) as members of the British Columbia delegation. This year was no exception. BCLI’s Executive Director, Karen Campbell, and Senior Staff Lawyer Greg Blue, KC took part in the ULCC’s 107th Annual Meeting held in Halifax from 10-14 August 2025.
The ULCC is Canada’s oldest law reform body, founded in 1918. It consists of two sections, Civil and Criminal. The federal government and all provincial and territorial governments support its work and send delegations to its annual meeting. Delegations include both governmental and private sector representatives.
The Criminal Section is a forum for prosecutors, defence counsel, academic criminal law experts, and criminal justice policy advisers to discuss substantive and operational issues in criminal justice and recommend legislative changes. The Criminal Section also has working groups active year-round to develop legislative and policy recommendations on specific issues throughout the rest of the year.
The focus of the Civil Section is harmonization of provincial and territorial laws. The Civil Section identifies areas where harmonization is most needed or desirable and develops uniform Acts that it recommends for enactment. Its constantly active working groups involve private practitioners, lawyers working in government, law reform agency personnel, and legal academics.
At the Annual Meeting, the Sections consider, amend and approve uniform legislation developed by the working groups, receive progress reports on projects not yet at that stage, and discuss issues on which the working groups have requested direction.
BCLI has a long history of collaboration with the ULCC. BCLI’s first Executive Director, Arthur Close QC, was the ULCC’s longest-serving delegate. He attended its Annual Meetings for over 40 years. At different times, he was President of the ULCC and the Chair of the Civil Section.
Two other former BCLI Executive Directors, Jim Emmerton and Kathleen Cunningham, successively chaired the ULCC working group that produced a new Uniform Vital Statistics Act that addresses recording of Indigenous names and contemporary issues affecting registration of births, parentage, and gender, including assisted reproduction and gender transition. BCLI provided much of the research that fed into that project.
BCLI’s lawyers have taken part in other ULCC projects over the years, including those that developed the Uniform Trustee Act, the Uniform Civil Enforcement of Money Judgments Act, the common law version of the Uniform Informal Public Appeals Act and its successor, the Uniform Benevolent and Community Crowdfunding Act.
At the 2025 Annual Meeting in Halifax, the Criminal Section passed 21 out of 29 proposed resolutions on matters ranging from
- victim impact statements
- revocation of probation orders
- adding certain firearms offences to the list of offences requiring the offender to provide a DNA sample
- a new offence of bringing contraband into a correctional institution.
The Criminal Section also heard reports from several working groups. A final report was received from a group working on revision of Criminal Code provisions concerning applications by the defence for pre-trial disclosure of records containing personal information relating to complainants or witnesses. Other Criminal Section working groups delivered progress reports on exemptions to mandatory minimum penalties, juries and fitness to stand trial hearings, and restrictions on publication of court proceedings.
The Civil Section, in which BCLI takes part, received and discussed reports from the working groups for its current projects:
- non-disclosure agreements
- defamation in the digital environment
- intestate succession
- class actions
- joint ventures
- cash payment
- hybrid organizations (corporations combining social and business enterprise)
- the legal definition of charity
- enforcement of foreign judgments.
In addition, the Criminal and Civil Sections held two joint sessions. One was dedicated to their current joint project on treatment of animals. This project is mainly concerned with harmonizing inspection and seizure powers, challenges related to seizure and post-seizure management of animals, standardization of prohibitory orders, and interjurisdictional enforcement of prohibitory orders.
The other joint session was an event that is now standard at each ULCC Annual Meeting, the Earl Fruchtman Memorial Seminar. This year’s seminar was a panel presentation on the response of the justice system to gender-based violence. Delegates learned of the Moose Hide Campaign, an Indigenous-led movement aimed at eliminating violence against women and children, and were asked to invited to display a small piece of moose hide as a badge symbolizing commitment to this objective.
One other event during the 2025 Annual Meeting bears mention. Traditionally, an East vs. West softball game is played during the five-day session. This year Team West won.
