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Federal elections between 2008 and 2019 saw a great of volatility in Quebec, with important consequences for election outcomes. The surge in New Democratic Party (NDP) support in Quebec led the party to official opposition, while Liberal gains in 2011 led the party to a majority government, and Bloc Québécois gains in 2019 helped to reduce the Liberals to a minority. To what extent was this volatility driven by voters switching parties and to what degree was it driven by voters entering and exiting the electorate? This article uses ecological inference based on riding-level data to examine the dynamics of party competition in Quebec from 2008 to 2019. We show that while voter mobilization mattered to volatility, vote switching was the important driver of changing party fortunes during this period., RésuméLes élections fédérales entre 2008 et 2019 ont connu une grande volatilité au Québec, avec des conséquences importantes sur les résultats électoraux. La poussée du soutien du NPD au Québec a conduit le parti à l'opposition officielle, tandis que les gains des libéraux en 2011 ont conduit le parti à un gouvernement majoritaire et que les gains du Bloc Québécois en 2019 ont contribué à réduire les libéraux à une minorité. Dans quelle mesure cette volatilité est-elle due au fait que les électeurs changent de parti et dans quelle mesure est-elle due au fait que les électeurs entrent et sortent de l'électorat ? Cet article utilise l'inférence écologique basée sur des données au niveau des circonscriptions pour examiner la dynamique de la concurrence entre les partis au Québec de 2008 à 2019. Nous montrons que, bien que la mobilisation des électeurs ait joué un rôle dans la volatilité, le changement de parti a été le principal moteur de l'évolution de la situation des partis au cours de cette période.

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L’article 2926.1 CcQ rend imprescriptibles les actions civiles liées aux violences sexuelles, conjugales et infantiles, dans la mesure où elles constituent un préjudice corporel. Or, le critère du préjudice corporel qu’impose cet article soulève plusieurs enjeux lorsqu’il s’agit de déterminer quelles victimes de violences sexuelles, conjugales et infantiles peuvent bénéficier de l’imprescriptibilité de leur action en réparation. Ces enjeux découlent d’une incertitude entourant le concept de préjudice corporel, dont la définition exige qu’un certain seuil soit dépassé pour qu’un acte sur le corps soit considéré comme une atteinte à l’intégrité physique.

Personal autonomy is a constitutive element of all rights. It confers upon a right-holder the power to decide whether, and under what circumstances, to exercise her right. Every right infringement thus invariably involves a violation of its holder’s autonomy. The autonomy violation consists of the deprivation of a right-holder of a choice that was rightfully hers – the choice as to how to go about her life. Harms resulting from the right’s infringement and from the autonomy violation are often readily distinguishable, as is the case when someone uses the property of a right-holder without securing her permission or, worse, causes her bodily injury. At other times, however, the two harms overlap, as in the case when a right-holder is unlawfully barred from exercising her free speech right or is denied the right to vote. Furthermore, the autonomy harm may sometimes exceed the physical harm sustained by the victim, as is the case in many sexual harassment incidents. At other times, however, the victim’s physical harm or economic loss will outweigh the autonomy harm, as is often the case in automobile accidents. Even though autonomy violations are omnipresent, and the harm resulting from them can be severe, the law rarely recognizes a cause of action for violations of autonomy, nor does it provide redress for autonomy harms. The current legal approach to autonomy protection can best be characterized as anomalous and unprincipled. Therefore, from a normative perspective, it is untenable. In this article, we set out to make three novel theoretical and doctrinal contributions. First, we advance a comprehensive jurisprudential account of the relationship between rights and autonomy. Second, we show why existing law should be replaced with a legal regime that respects and protects individual autonomy in all cases. Finally, we develop a remedial framework designed to address autonomy violations. Mindful of administrability constraints, we incorporate three limitations to ensure that our proposal does not overwhelm the court system: (a) suits for autonomy violations would only be allowed when the plaintiff has a cause of action originating from the defendant’s infringement of her recognized legal right; (b) any such suit would undergo a strict de minimis scrutiny; and (c) no double recovery would be allowed in cases in which the plaintiff’s autonomy harm is subsumed in her physical or economic loss.

This paper explores Canadian family law cases involving claims of parental alienation and of family violence from 2014–2018, reporting the data on these claims, their resolution, and their impacts upon custody and access. A close reading of those cases where both alienation and intimate partner violence claims are made reveals troubling patterns in how intimate partner violence is discounted in this context. We suggest that the rise of shared parenting as a dominant norm assists in understanding why alienation has achieved such unquestioned status, and call for greater focus on safety and women’s and children’s voices.

Canadian courts have held that parents stand in a fiduciary relationship with their children. Some commentators take the view that this is an inappropriate and unwarranted extension of a set of concepts that were originally elaborated in the context of the management of property rights and other pecuniary interests. The goal of this article is to assess the characterization of parents as fiduciaries in the light of recent scholarship on fiduciary law. I argue that, while there are significant differences between the parent-child context and more established fiduciary categories, the characterization of the parent as a fiduciary toward his or her child nonetheless captures a central – indeed, a defining – element of the parent-child relationship, which is also a characteristic element of all established fiduciary relationships: namely, the possession of legal powers that are held in a managerial or other-regarding capacity for the benefit of another person. Every aspect of the traditional property-based fiduciary relationship finds its counterpart in the juridical relationship between a parent and his or her minor child. The ability of a parent to take account of his or her own interests in relation to some exercises of the parent’s decision-making powers is also found in many established fiduciary relationships. The recognition of parenthood as a fiduciary relationship leads to a better understanding of fiduciary relationships because it clarifies how such relationships are constituted, and it clarifies that they extend to any situation where one person is empowered and authorized to look after the interests of another, whether those interests be financial or entirely personal.

Should family lawyers be subject to special rules of professional conduct? This debate has resurfaced because of the 2021 amendments to the federal Divorce Act (“Act”), which imposed new professional obligations on lawyers. The suggestion is that the Act now conflicts with the Federation of Law Societies Model Code of Professional Conduct (“Model Code”), such that the Model Code needs to be amended to comply with family lawyers’ legislative professional obligations. There are also questions about whether additional guidance is needed for lawyers when representing parties who are experiencing family violence. Against this backdrop, I review the question of whether family lawyers ought to be governed by a separate code of professional conduct, suggesting that there are questions about the lawyer’s role which need to be answered before a comprehensive regulatory change can be considered. I also argue, however, that family violence concerns, specifically in relation to intimate partner violence, need to be central to discussions about professional rules and ought not wait. This paper concludes with recommendations for reform to the Model Code and questions for future debate and discussion.

Alongside the dominant law and economics and corrective justice approaches to tort law, a new genre of tort theory based on principles and perspectives of social justice has come into its own and deserves recognition. Social justice tort theory starts from the premise that tort law reflects and reinforces systemic forms of injustice in the larger society and maintains that the compensatory ideal of tort law cannot be extricated from these larger systems. It is multi-dimensional and intersectional, recognizing that the impact of injury lands intersectionally, sometimes changing the intensity of the injury or distorting the nature of the injury. Social justice tort scholars have examined torts in gendered and racialized contexts, as well as in ordinary cases that seem to have little to do with systemic injury. In addition to feminist and critical race theory, they have borrowed from critical disability studies, queer theory and political economy. Their work demonstrates how tort law unfairly distributes damages, fails to provide adequate relief for victims of sexual assault or for people who suffer racial insult and discrimination, and erases maternal and reproductive harms. In their work, we can see common deconstructive moves (an emphasis on disparate impacts and devaluation; a teasing out of cognitive bias; and a critique of exceptionalism in tort doctrine) as well as guiding principles for reconstruction (incorporating victims’ perspectives; treating boundaries between civil rights law and tort law as permeable; and enhancing dignity and recognition).

In the article, we make three claims. First, we argue that a large number of what are traditionally seen as separate torts are, at their core, all about affronts to the dignity of the victim. These include offensive battery, assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, invasion of privacy, some nuisances, and abuse of process (malicious prosecution). These torts do not involve direct physical harm but, rather, emotional distress from having your dignity attacked. Second, we argue that as these torts have developed inside of their own doctrinal silos, there are important differences among the laws governing them. Third, we argue that these differences are not justified and that it would be better to create a consistent tort approach to dignitary harm: tort recovery should lie for injuries resulting from wrongful conduct that is highly offensive and causes more than minor harm. This, it turns out, is the standard that currently applies in a majority of jurisdictions for privacy invasions. If more widely adopted, this standard would, for example, far more easily allow recovery for nasty verbal sexual (or other) harassment, since intentional infliction of emotional distress currently requires a much stronger showing. At the same time, it would preclude recovery for minor physical touchings that technically now qualify as offensive battery. We think this achieves the balance much better.

This article proposes a new conceptual framework for parent-child and adult relationships in the Civil Code of Québec based on the theory of relationships of economic and emotional interdependency. It puts forward a new théorie générale for relationships in Quebec civil law. It argues that the Code should concentrate on relationships of economic and emotional interdependency, irrespective of their form or of their fulfillment of formalities. Their content and qualities should be the law’s object, hence allowing for a functional account of families and personal lives. Doing so would require a recodification of economic and emotional relationships in the Code, to provide a more meaningful legal framework addressing families and personal lives. Fundamentally, the hope is to shift the normative content of family law in Quebec private law from “the family” to relationships, and to take a stance against family law exceptionalism.

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