Legal Cases

This public inquiry is investigating the death of Mr. Frank Paul, a 47 year-old homeless Mi’kmaq man who died in an alley after being left there by police in December 1998. The final phase of the Frank Paul inquiry has … Read More →

The BCCLA has been supporting a student group at the University of Victoria that is opposed to abortion. The group has been delisted as a campus organization as a result of posters they put up and a forum they held … Read More →

This submission is made pursuant to an Inquiry under Part 5 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 165 as amended (“FIPPA”), pursuant to a request for a review of the decision of the … Read More →

In the lead-up to the 2010 Olympics, the City of Vancouver passed bylaws stating that only “celebratory” signs that increased positive feelings and festive spirit around the Olympics would be permitted in large areas of the downtown core. The BCCLA … Read More →

This case concerns the proposed extradition of M.J.C.K. , the appellant, a Canadian citizen, to Thailand, a country with the death penalty. The Appellant was granted leave to appeal the matter to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the BCCLA … Read More →

Abousfian Abdelrazik is the only Canadian citizen on the UN Security Council 1267 no-fly list. His listing automatically subjects him to domestic Canadian legislation that freezes his assets and leaves him all but unemployable. Yet Mr. Abdelrazik faces no criminal … Read More →

The BCCLA continues its work before the Military Police Complaints Commission as part of the public interest investigation into the handling of detainees by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. The BCCLA filed complaints with the MPCC in 2007 and 2008 voicing … Read More →

The BCCLA supported Maher Arar’s U.S. civil suit against American officials for their role in his rendition and torture in Syria. We argued that Mr. Arar is entitled to a remedy under U.S. law for the serious human rights violations … Read More →

In this case the Supreme Court of Canada will consider whether hyperlinking to defamatory material – defamatory material hosted by someone else, elsewhere on the internet – amounts to publication for the purposes of a claim in defamation. The BCCLA … Read More →

This case concerns the constitutionality of the hate speech provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act. The BCCLA has been granted leave as an intervener and will argue before the Federal Court that extending hate speech provisions to the internet would … Read More →