CLASS COUNSEL FEES

Why we should rethink
class action settlements
PAGE 9
B-1 VISAS
When work visas
just won’t do
PAGE 14
MERGERS
SMOKING
10 TOP-BILLING FEDERAL CROWN AGENTS
FOR CIVIL WORK DONE IN 2010 Last minute voters bump bencher election turnout

The Charter’s nascent protection for collective bargaining does not compel governments to extend to all organized workers the typical protections for collective bargaining enshrined in most Canadian labour laws, a divided Supreme Court has ruled.

After reserving for more than 16 months on Ontario A.G. v. Fraser, the top court split 8-1 on April 29 to allow the Ontario government’s appeal of a decision which required legislators to give agricultural workers the same basic statutory collective bargaining rights as other workers in the province.

The nine judges splintered 5-2-
1-1 in four widely divergent opin-
ions. But eight of them did ultim-
ately agree that the Ontario Court
of Appeal got it wrong in 2008
when it struck down the Agricul-
tural Employees Protection Act,
2002 (AEPA) for failing to effect-
ively safeguard farm workers’
Charter-guaranteed collective
bargaining rights.

Enacted by Ontario’s then-
Conservative government led by
Premier Mike Harris, the AEPA
favourable labour relations regime
for agricultural workers than
other workers enjoy under the

Labour Relations Act (LRA).

The Court of Appeal declared
the AEPA unconstitutional. It
based its decision on what the
Supreme Court’s majority ruled
last month in Fraser was an overly
expansive interpretation of the
top court’s four-year-old labour

ALISTAIR EAGLE FOR THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
Vancouver: Heenan Blaikie’s Peter Gall, counsel for the intervener Coalition of B.C. Businesses, said the court has nixed
overly broad views of the Charter’s collective bargaining protection.
See Fraser Page 3
1. Lenczner Slaght Royce Smith Griffin ONTARIO 5,330,396
THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
Vol. 22, No. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION December 6, 2002
THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
VOL. 22, NO. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION DECEMBER 6, 2002
Merger mania: More law
firm mergers coming?
PAGE 21
THOMAS CLARIDGE TORONTO

Thanks to a last-minute flood of votes, a record number of Ontario lawyers elected 40 of their colleagues as Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) benchers — 20 each inside and outside Toronto.

But while Toronto’s legal community will have half the voting power at Convocation, the second most populous of Ontario’s eight judicial regions, Central West, will have just one vote, while the Northeast Region, with a far smaller population but a lot of well-known lawyers, will have four benchers.

As is usually the case, most of
the 28 incumbent benchers who
ran won re-election. However, one
of the three losers, Ottawa lawyer
William Simpson, last year made
an unsuccessful bid to become
LSUC’s treasurer. The bencher who
beat him, Toronto lawyer Laurie
Pawlitza, easily won re-election,
topping the polls with 5,421 votes
to Simpson’s 1,753 and 3,649 gar-
nered by Toronto lawyer Beth
Symes, the third candidate for the
law society’s top job.
“This is an excellent board
and well-equipped to lead the
law society through the challen-
ges and opportunities of the next
four years,” Pawlitza said in a
press release. “We have a broad
range of legal expertise and skill
in this group of men and women.
I am confident that they will
carefully consider the matters
we will address in meeting the
law society’s mandate to govern
in the public interest.”
See Election Page 25
2. Lawson Lundell BRITISH COLUMBIA 4,762,794