We note that the province has just adopted Bill 44, a new law that limits the use of public hearings. In this consultation, we hope to hear from all members of the public, and look forward to receiving comments that will assist the BCLI Renovate the Public Hearing Project Committee in developing its final recommendations for reform.

Public hearings have been a feature of BC’s land-use legislation for local governments for about 100 years. Recently, critics have questioned whether public hearings are serving the purpose of providing a deliberative forum to assist local governments in making decisions on land-use planning. The Renovate the Public Hearing Project provides an opportunity to think about public engagement on land use from first principles, consider new insights into group deliberation, and create a better way for local governments to engage the public.

Copies of the consultation paper, a short backgrounder summarizing its contents, and a link to our survey are all available at the project webpage. The consultation is open until 15 March 2024.

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The Gathering is a partnership between the provincial government and the First Nations Leadership Council, which is comprised of the BC Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Summit, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. It is designed to recognize, respect, and advance government-to-government relationships and facilitate joint dialogue and collaboration in support of reconciliation. The record number of attendees at this year’s Gathering represented 193 First Nations and organizations and included Grand Chief Stewart Phillip from the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Robert Phillips from the First Nations Summit, Regional Chief Terry Teegee from the BC Assembly of First Nations, BC Premier David Eby, Attorney General Niki Sharma, and the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, Murray Rankin.

BCLI’s Executive Director, Karen Campbell, and BCLI staff lawyer and Reconciling Crown Legal Frameworks (RCLF) program lead, Megan Vis-Dunbar, represented BCLI on the convention floor. They engaged with attendees and promoted the RCLF program by sharing copies of the five reconciliation primers and information about some of the program’s upcoming work, including a study paper on Indigenous Courts. A significant moment for BCLI came when the reconciliation primers were highlighted in a presentation by Minister Rankin, who encouraged delegates to pick up copies.

BCLI is grateful to have had this opportunity to strengthen our relationships with First Nations leaders and government ministers. We are thankful for the positive feedback we received throughout the event, and we look forward to building on the connections we made as we continue to develop our reconciliation work.

The post BCLI attends BC Cabinet & First Nations Leaders’ Gathering 2023 first appeared on British Columbia Law Institute.

On October 26, 2023, the Money Judgment Enforcement Act (Bill 27) received royal assent. First introduced in May 2023, this legislation implements recommendations made by BCLI in its 2005 report based on the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s Uniform Civil Enforcement of Money Judgments Act. We are heartened to see that our work from such a significant project has been implemented by the BC Government. Although many years have passed since the report was published, we take this as a reminder that law reform often requires taking durable, long-term approaches. The Act is set to enter into force in 2025.

On November 1, 2023, the Legislative Assembly also introduced Bill 43, the Money Judgment Enforcement Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions Act. This bill builds on Bill 27 by introducing 74 legislative amendments that are necessary for the Money Judgment Enforcement Act to be effectively enforced.

The Ministry of Attorney General explained some of the changes that are to be made to the money judgments enforcement process in its media release earlier this month:

One important change will make it possible for monetary orders from the CRT [Civil Resolution Tribunal] to be directly registered in a new money judgment registry. The CRT will also be authorized to register a judgment on behalf of a successful party, making it easier for CRT clients to collect their judgments.

The transition provisions will ensure that people can choose to continue to use a writ of seizure and sale or collect money from a garnishing order they obtained before the Money Judgement Enforcement Act came into force. If a writ expires after one year and a judgment is not satisfied yet, it will transition to the Money Judgment Enforcement Act. At the same time, a person can choose to transition to the new act even if the writ has not expired.

Most of the other changes replace references to the Court Order Enforcement Act with references to the Money Judgment Enforcement Act. Other changes include replacing references to outdated ways of enforcing a money judgment (such as a writ of seizure and sale), with “enforcement proceedings” under the Money Judgment Enforcement Act.

The post BCLI welcomes updates to money judgments enforcement legislation first appeared on British Columbia Law Institute.

On 29 March 2023 an open letter signed by leading tech experts calling for a pause on Giant AI Experiments was released.[1]  It asks governments and the global research community for a minimum 6-month pause in training artificial intelligence systems larger than GPT-4, the next iteration of the system that powers ChatGPT.[2] Signatories include  Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and prominent AI experts and researchers in major AI labs around the world. An author of a leading textbook on AI has signed on. The open letter raises serious concerns about the uncontrolled development and expansion of AI systems that even the creators of the systems cannot “understand, predict, or reliably control.” It emphasizes a need for agreement on safety protocols for the design and development of advanced AI systems to curb what it sees as “the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.”[3] The open letter includes liability for AI-caused harm in a list of several essential policy elements for the governance of AI. 

Through practical, just, and balanced reform, the BCLI Artificial Intelligence and Civil Liability Project is aimed at ensuring that tort remedies will provide effective redress for AI-related harm at a time in wherein AI is increasingly pervasive.  We will issue a consultation paper in the spring of 2023 setting out tentative recommendations for public comment.  Look for the consultation paper later this spring on the project webpage.

[1] See Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter – Future of Life Institute.

[2] ChatGPT is currently powered by GPT-3.5.  GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer.”  While ChatGPT was designed to produce text resembling the writing of humans in response to inputs by humans, GPT-4 is a large general-purpose language model that is able to perform many other functions.

[3] “Emergent capabilities” refers to the phenomenon of “emergence.”  Emergence is unpredictable, original, and unprogrammed behaviour of an AI system or AI-controlled device as it seeks ways of achieving programmed objectives.

The post International Call for Six-Month Pause in Giant AI Experiments Shows Importance and Timeliness of BCLI’s AI and Civil Liability Project first appeared on British Columbia Law Institute.

When it is enacted, the bill’s amendments will provide a host of improvements to BC’s comprehensive legislation on pension division. These improvements include clarifying and modernizing the law on locked-in retirement accounts and life income funds; private annuities; waiving survivor benefits after pension commencement; the powers of a personal representative after the death of a spouse; commuted value: transfer and calculation; disability benefits; and transitions.

BCLI’s Report on Pension Division: A Review of Part 6 of the Family Law Act was published in March 2021 as the culmination of its project on pension division. The project featured over two years’ work by an expert project committee and a broad-based public consultation.

Quotes

“I’m happy to see the introduction of amendments to part 6 of the Family Law Act. BCLI’s Pension Division Review Committee examined part 6 for over two years and recommended changes that would improve how pension division works for separating spouses. The BCLI committee’s recommended changes will enhance BC’s pension-division system for all stakeholders, including boards of trustees of registered pension plans, administrators, pension and family-law lawyers, and individual plan members and spouses.”—Colin Galinski, Chair, BCLI Pension Division Review Project Committee

“BCLI is grateful to see our recommendations become implemented in a bill that will improve the law on pension division. On behalf of BCLI, I would like to thank the Pension Division Project Committee and all who participated in the project’s public consultation for their assistance in developing these reforms to an important area of the law.”—Tejas B. V. Madhur, Chair, British Columbia Law Institute

Quick links

• Bill 17, Family Law Amendment Act, 2023 (first reading)
• Report on Pension Division: A Review of Part 6 of the Family Law Act
• Backgrounder—Summary of the Report on Pension Division: A Review of Part 6 of the Family Law Act (PDF)
• Backgrounder—Pension Division Review: Legislative Fact Sheet (PDF)
• Backgrounder—Quick Facts about the Pension Division Review Project (PDF)
• Backgrounder—Members of the Pension Division Review Project Committee (PDF)
• Pension Division Review Project Webpage
• BC government announcement “Changes to Family Law Act will make it easier for separating couples”

The post BCLI welcomes pension division reforms first appeared on British Columbia Law Institute.