Safe at Work
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services For most people, just getting through a day at work is hard enough without facing the prospect of harassment or violence on the job. Effective June 15, 2010, workers in Ontario will have new protections against harassment or violence in the workplace… READ MORE
Motor Vehicle Repairs
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services One of the realities of living in this area is the need for a source of reliable transportation. There are no buses, no taxis, no subways, and except for volunteer drivers, good neighbours, family members or friends and/or the Rural Routes program,… READ MORE
Modernizing Legal Aid Services
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services If you need legal help in Ontario and cannot afford to pay for a lawyer, you may be able to take advantage of one of the programs operated by Legal Aid Ontario (LAO). Whether or not you can receive help from LAO… READ MORE
HST is Coming!
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services Ontarians will begin paying the new Harmonized Sales Tax on July 1st, 2010. It combines the existing sales taxes, the GST (a federal tax of 5%) and the PST (a provincial tax of 8%) into one 13% sales tax. While politicians and… READ MORE
Don’t Call Me!
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services (Editor’s note – warning, this column contains some wishful thinking about the outcome of the Olympic men’s hockey tournament) It’s the last period of Canada vs. the USA in the final Olympic hockey game and the telephone rings: “Are you interested in… READ MORE
Courts of Sharbot Lake – Revisited
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services The Legal Clinic in Sharbot Lake has been producing a “Legalese” column for more than 20 years. For one reason or another, we sometimes find ourselves looking at our old columns and when we do, it’s interesting to see how the law… READ MORE
Talk to Me
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services You can talk to me. What you tell me stays with me. In fact, as a lawyer, I have very little choice in the matter. Every lawyer in Ontario is governed by the Rules of Professional Conduct as set down and enforced… READ MORE
Changes to Legal Aid
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services Significant changes are coming to Legal Aid Ontario. The most dramatic changes will be noticed initially by people seeking Legal Aid Certificates to retain lawyers in Criminal or Family Law matters as set out in the following information release from Legal Aid… READ MORE
Help
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services We live in an increasingly complicated world. A world of voice mail with confusing menus rattled off at break neck speed by electronic voices, “self-help” kits and forms that seem to require at least a college diploma to understand and, of course,… READ MORE
Insurance
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services Insurance is one of those things that we often don’t think about – until we need it! In fact many of us just tune out when it comes to this topic. After all, there are so many different types to consider: life,… READ MORE
Changes to the Law in 2009 to Remember in 2010
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services The law is always changing. Each year brings an almost unbelievable onslaught of new legislation, amendments to existing legislation and supporting regulations and, of course, new interpretations of the law by our Courts. Lawyers are supposed to keep up with it all… READ MORE
Eyes on the Road
By Susan Irwin, Executive Director / Lawyer, Rural Legal Services Earlier in the week while on route to Kingston I noticed the driver in the adjacent car talking animatedly on his hand-held cell phone. The gentleman was either blissfully unaware of or deliberately ignoring Ontario’s new law banning the use of hand-held… READ MORE
Modernizing the legislative framework of not-for-profit corporations
by Peter Graham, Lawyer, Rural Legal Services The Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services has undertaken a project to review and reform the Ontario Corporations Act (CA) in order to develop a new legal framework to govern the structure and activities of charities and not-for-profit corporations in Ontario. The update… READ MORE