User:Oceanflynn/Contributions/Useful references related to articles on Canadian legislation

Useful references related to articles on Canadian legislation

Significant legislation in 42nd Parliament

 * Bill C-14 "passed with a free vote, as the government's response to Carter v Canada; it inserted the term "medical assistance in dying" into the Criminal Code and made provisions for adult Canadians to engage in the practice."


 * Bill C-16 added "gender identity or expression" to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the list of characteristics of identifiable groups protected from hate propaganda in the Criminal Code - with only 40 Conservative Party members, who were all granted a free vote, opposed the bill.


 * Accessible Canada Act (Bill C-81) With all party support, the Accessible Canada Act (Bill C-81) created the Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization and the positions of Accessibility Commissioner as a member of the Human Rights Commission and Chief Accessibility Officer as an adviser to the minister responsible for accessibility. The Cannabis Act (Bill C-45) created a legal framework that allows for recreational use of cannabis by adults. Bill C-69 repealed and replaced the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the National Energy Board Act with the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, respectively, and renamed the Navigation Protection Act to the Canadian Navigable Waters Act with new considerations for what constitutes 'navigable water'. With only the Conservative Party opposed, Bill C-55 amended the Oceans Act to require the use of the precautionary principle in establishing a marine protected areas and added the maintenance of ecological integrity as a reason for their establishment. In November 2018 Bill C-89 ended a strike action by employees of Canada Post.


 * Transportation Modernization Act (Bill C-49) In modernizing existing legislation, the Transportation Modernization Act (Bill C-49) amended the Canada Transportation Act to, among other things, implement long-haul interswitching as a permanent mechanism in the rail industry, exclude revenue from interswitching and from the movement of grain in containers on flatcars from Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway's maximum revenue entitlement,; require railway companies to keep up-to-date plans for each of their railway lines and to publicly report on their abilities to move a given summer's grain crop along with a winter contingency plans, raise the foreign ownership limits for Canadian airlines from 25% to 49% of an airline's voting interest with the new rule that no single foreign investor may own more than 25%, expand the review of joint ventures in the airline industry to also include the public interest and fair competition practices; the bill also amended several other transportation-related acts including the CN Commercialization Act to increase the individual ownership limit in Canadian National Railway from 15% to 25%, and the Railway Safety Act to require the installation of locomotive voice and video recorders onto trains. Bill C-23 repealed the Preclearance Act, 1999 and replaced it with the Preclearance Act, 2016


 * Bill C-59 modernized national security matters by adopting four new acts titled the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency Act, the Avoiding Complicity in Mistreatment by Foreign Entities Act and the  Intelligence Commissioner Act and Communications Security Establishment Act, in addition to making amendments to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and Secure Air Travel Act.


 * Bill C-25 variously amended the Canada Business Corporations Act, Canada Cooperatives Act, and Canada Not‑for‑profit Corporations Act to, among other things, allow more online tools to be used to disseminate required information to shareholders in notice and access systems, to require certain types of corporations to disclose to shareholders the composition of their boards and senior management, as well as their diversity policies or the statement that they do not have a diversity policy. The bill also prohibited businesses from issuing bearer forms of share certificates and share warrants and modified how directors of certain corporations and cooperatives are elected: that they must be elected individually, not as a slate or a group of candidates, and reduce maximum term lengths from 3 to 1 years.


 * Bill C-57 updated how Canada's Sustainable Development Strategy is implemented.


 * Bill C-78 updated the Divorce Act and two other related acts, as well as brought them in line with international standards of the Child Protection Convention and Child Support Convention.


 * Bill C-46 On public safety and crime, Bill C-46 inserted new provisions into the Criminal Code regarding drug–impaired driving and the ability of peace officers to use drug screening equipment and random breath testing.


 * Bill C-84 On animal cruelty, Bill C-84 expanded the Criminal Code's provisions against cockpits to include any "arena for animal fighting" and in response to the Supreme Court of Canada findings in R. v. D.L.W., added a definition for bestiality.


 * Bill C-75, generally seeking to address court delays and promote fair and efficient trails but also included multiple other amendments, removed the allowance of peremptory challenge, allowed warrants to be acted upon anywhere in Canada rather than only in its originating province, added new provisions for video conference by judges and court participants, restricted the use of preliminary inquiries to only cases involving offences punishable by life imprisonment, reclassified an additional 115 offenses as hybrid offenses so that they may be prosecuted either as summary convictions or as indictable offences, increased the maximum penalty for summary convictions to two years imprisonment, and deleted or amended offenses from the Criminal Code that the Supreme Court found to be unconstitutional (abortion in R v Morgentaler, vagrancy in R v Heywood, spreading false news in R v Zundel, anal intercourse in R v CM, and those offenses in R v Martineau).


 * Bill C-51 repealed or modified provisions within the Criminal Code found to be unconstitutional or obsolete, including those against dueling, blasphemous libel, witchcraft, crime comics and trading stamps and, in response to R v JA, clarified that an unconscious person is unable to grant consent to sexual activity.


 * Bill C-66 The Expungement of Historically Unjust Convictions Act (Bill C-66) allows the Parole Board of Canada to expunge historical convictions related to gross indecency, buggery or anal intercourse.


 * Bill C-93 created a process in the Criminal Records Act to allow individuals convicted of possession of cannabis before its legalization to request a record suspension. Partially in response to recent court decisions on solitary confinement and the recommendations of the Ashley Smith inquest, Bill C-83 replaced the system of administrative and disciplinary segregation in federal prisons with "structured intervention units".


 * Bill C-71 amended the Firearms Act to delete the 5-year limitation on background checks, mandate that sellers verify a licence before selling a non‑restricted firearm, require sellers to maintain records of sales, require that automatic authorization to transport documents specify destinations and repeals the Governor in Council's ability to reclassify specific firearms between restricted and non-restricted. Bill C-71 also undid the provisions in the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1 exempting the Ending the Long‑gun Registry Act from the Privacy Act, Access to Information Act and the Library and Archives of Canada Act; and allows Quebec access to the Canadian Firearms Registry Data as requested in Quebec (AG) v Canada (AG).


 * Bill C-37 Responding to other legislation adopted during the previous parliament, Bill C-37, removed some of the obstacles to supervised injection sites that the previous parliament's Respect for Communities Act had put in place and replaced the previous government's National Anti-Drug Strategy with the new Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy, mostly centered on the opioid epidemic.


 * Bill C-6 amended or repealed parts of the previous parliament's Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act including the ability to revoke citizenship based on national security, the requirement that applicants for citizenship aged 14 to 18 and 55 to 64 to prove adequate knowledge Canada and of an official language, the residency requirement increase from three years to four years, the disallowance of time spent as temporary resident as contributing to the residency requirement, and the condition of citizenship that the applicant must intend to reside in Canada. Bill C-6 kept, but modified or expanded, Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act's prohibition that time spent imprisoned does not contribute to the residency requirement, that an imprisoned applicant may not be granted citizenship, and that citizenship applicants must file tax returns during their residency requirement.


 * Bill C-68 In addition to adding a purpose statement to the Fisheries Act, Bill C-68 restored the provision against the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat that the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act had deleted.


 * Bill C-42-1 repealed two private member bills adopted in the last parliament concerning union voting and financial reporting. Preparing for the 2016 Census, and in response to the previous government's involvement in the 2011 Census, Bill C-36 amended the Statistics Act to provide more independence to the Chief Statistician, remove imprisonment as a penalty for not responding to a census, and replacing the National Statistics Council with the Canadian Statistics Advisory Council.


 * Bills C-17 and C-88 amended the previous parliament's Yukon and Nunavut Regulatory Improvement Act and the Northwest Territories Oil and Gas Operations Act, respectively, to address certain objections to the previous legislation.


 * Bill C-62 restored or addressed changes made by the previous parliament to the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act regarding the determination of essential services, the ability to select between arbitration and conciliation to resolve collective bargaining disputes, and matters related to sick and disability leave.


 * Bill C-11 Following through with international agreements, Bill C-11 implemented the Marrakesh VIP Treaty, Bill C-13 implemented the Bali Package,


 * Bill C-64 implemented the Wreck Removal Convention, Bill C-82 implemented the BEPS multilateral instrument,


 * Bill C-31 implemented the Canada–Ukraine Free Trade Agreement, all with unanimous consent,


 * Bill C-30 while the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Bill C-30) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Bill C-79) were implemented with only Liberals and Conservatives in support. Fulfilling a condition to ending Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum,


 * Bill C-101 suspended, until 2021, the moratorium on trade safeguards.


 * Bill C-91 Further integrating the principles of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Indigenous Languages Act (Bill C-91) created the Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages to support the efforts of Indigenous peoples in maintaining Indigenous languages and


 * Bill C-92 expanded the what is considered the best interests of an Indigenous child in the provision of child and family services to include the child's traditions, customs and language.


 * Bill C-7 With only Liberal Party support, Bill C-7 was adopted as the government's response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Mounted Police Association of Ontario v. Canada (Attorney General), allowing RCMP members to have certain collective bargaining rights.


 * Bill C-22 created the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.


 * Bill C-58 amended the Access to Information Act to insert a new purpose statement, insert in requirements to make requests, allow bad faith or vexatious requests to be refused, and require proactive publication of certain information (e.g. travel expenses, hospitality expenses, etc.)


 * Bill C-10 amended the Air Canada Public Participation Act to expand where Air Canada's maintenance centres may be located to the general provinces of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, rather than the specific cities of Winnipeg, Mississauga and Montreal.


 * Bill C-50 With only the Conservative Party and Bloc Québécois opposed, Bill C-50 created new reporting requirements for political fundraising events attended by a party leader or a minister and expanded the reporting of leadership campaign expenses.