Freya Kodar’s research while affiliated with University of Victoria and other places

September 19, 2011 marked the deadline for survivors of abuse at the Woodlands School (“Woodlands”) in New Westminster, British Columbia to apply for compensation under the Woodlands School Settlement Agreement (the “Settlement Agreement”) approved by the British Columbia Supreme Court. The Settlement Agreement was the culmination of a lengthy litigation process over abuse of children and adults with disabilities at Woodlands, a residential facility operated by the province. Two aspects of the litigation and the Settlement Agreement terms are particularly significant for historical abuse claims. The first is the province’s use of crown proceedings legislation to create a cut-off that restricts recovery to those claimants who suffered abuse after August 1, 1974 – the commencement date of British Columbia’s Crown Proceedings Act (CPA). The second is the fact that the Settlement Agreement terms allow survivors to seek compensation for sexual and non-sexual abuse even though the limitation period for the non-sexual abuse claim has expired for many, if not most, of the claimants. Considered more broadly in the context of other challenges that historical abuse survivors face in bringing their claims, these features of the Woodlands litigation process suggest it may be becoming increasingly difficult for survivors to successfully bring a claim, particularly against the Crown.

RésuméAu cours des dernières années, on a longuement analysé et débattu la réforme des pensions. Cependant, on n'a pas vraiment discuté comment comptabiliser le travail des femmes non rémunéré, et pourtant nécessaire pour la société, aux fins du Régime de pensions. Pour examiner ce problème en apparence persistant, le présent article étudie les débats menés sur le travail non rémunéré et les pensions depuis la publication en 1970 du Rapport de la Commission royale d'enquête sur la situation de la femme au Canada. L'auteure observe que malgré les changements majeurs ou mineurs apportés au Régime de pensions du Canada, la sécurité financiè re des femmes à la retraite est encore largement définie par le salaire qu'elles ont touché dans leur vie, ou leur lien avec un salarié dans leur ménage.

In this article the authors look at their experiences teaching the trespass torts to law students using a documentary film about Muir v. Alberta. The case was brought by Leilani Muir against the government of Alberta for battery and false imprisonment and for sterilizing her without her knowledge or consent. The documentary follows Muir's court case, and interweaves her personal story with the larger social history of the eugenics movement and the development of The Sexual Sterilization Act. The authors begin with a description of the Muir documentary and a discussion of the ways in which the texts, written and filmic, work together in the context of telling Muir's story. The authors then discuss film as a medium for telling legal stories. Finally, the authors reflect on their classroom experiences with the various Muir texts, and the ways in which the film assists them in teaching both the particular case and torts more generally. The authors suggest that complementing case reports with documentaries about them, or events related to the case, helps to provide alternative and sometimes counter stories to the official account.

Commentators characterize thinking about payday loans as falling into two general perspectives. On one theory, payday loans respond to market demand and are a sensible choice for a consumer with limited assets, credit, or other support when an unexpected financial need arises. The opposing theory holds that the loans are usurious and exploit vulnerable low-income borrowers. In 2007, amendments were passed exempting payday loans from the application of the criminal interest rate provisions of the Criminal Code if they were made by companies licensed by a province with a regulatory scheme. The author examines how federal and provincial lawmakers and administrative decision-makers understood payday loans and those who use them, and how the conceptualizations of borrowers and the industry are reflected in the regulatory regimes that emerged. To do this the author considers the federal legislative debates about the Criminal Code amendments and the subsequent cost-setting decisions in Manitoba and Nova Scotia, the first two provinces to regulate payday lending. Despite Manitoba’s focus on more vulnerable borrowers, she concludes that assessed as a whole the regulatory regimes better correspond to the “market demand” school of thought about payday loans.

This paper examines the broad question of whether the limitation defence as currently constructed and applied in the context of tort actions for historical abuse in Canadian common law jurisdictions leads to unfairness and inequities, and asks whether a more nuanced and contextualized approach which looks at the power imbalances between the parties is needed to do justice in such cases. The paper canvasses the traditional rationales for setting limitation dates and ways in which courts and legislatures avoid or minimize the harshness of their application to plaintiffs’ claims. Particular attention is paid to the effects of these approaches in historical abuse cases, noting their inability to ensure all survivors of historical abuse can seek redress. The paper uses two historical abuse cases involving sterilization - Muir v Alberta and DE (Guardian ad Litem) v British Columbia - to illustrate the arbitrariness and questionable results of some of the strategies used to circumvent the limitation defence. This paper concludes with some thoughts about a more nuanced and contextualized approach to limitation periods in historical abuse claims. The approach is grounded in the importance of giving meaning to autonomy, security and dignity over one’s body and promotes consistency in survivors’ ability to seek justice for both sexual and non-sexual abuses.

To complement our special issue on feminism, law, and film, we called for short submissions from feminist colleagues telling stories about the ways in which they have used film in the law school classroom. It is so rare that we share with each other the innovative pedagogies that we use on a daily basis, so this is a way to have at our fingertips a catalogue of moments in which teaching law has been enhanced through the use of film. Afin de compléter le numéro sur le féminisme, le droit et le cinéma, nous avons sollicité de courts textes de collègues féministes qui utilisent des films dans leur enseignement. Il est très rare que nous ayons l’occasion de partager entre nous des innovations pédagogiques. Nous vous proposons donc ce catalogue de films qui vous permettra d’améliorer vos enseignements du droit. In the last few decades, the trespass torts, with their recognition of the importance of personal autonomy, bodily integrity, self-determination, and dignity, have become important tools for providing justice to survivors of systemic disadvantage, discrimination, and harm.1 Thus, one of the more rewarding and difficult sections of our torts course focuses on using the trespass torts to protect individual autonomy and dignity. After learning about the general principles of the trespass torts, especially the law’s requirement that there be consent to any form of bodily interference, we look more particularly at medical battery, sexual wrongdoing, and unlawful sterilization by state officials. One of the sterilization cases that we discuss is Muir v. Alberta, a case brought by Leilani Muir against the government of Alberta for battery and false imprisonment for confining her to the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives from 1955, when she was ten years old, until 1965, and for sterilizing her without her knowledge or consent at the age of fourteen.2 We use a number of pedagogical tools to look at this case. We read both “the case”—excerpts from the decision regarding Muir’s claim and the quantum of damages for the confinement and battery3—and Gerald Robertson’s expert witness report to the court on the eugenics movement and its influence on the province’s Sexual Sterilization Act.4 Simply reading texts that describe experiences and realities, particularly written from places of privilege such as the Bench and academia, “risks distancing . . . readers from the issues and thereby failing to engender empathy for the marginalized.”5 In line with the growing use of film as text and the power of images on audiences, we resort to another text, the documentary film The Sterilization of Leilani Muir.6 The viewing experience is an intimate one as we ask students to watch the film on their own or in small groups in the library’s viewing room. This is partly to allow them to deal with emotions that tend to arise from seeing the documentary for the first time. The documentary and expert report provide important historical and social background about the broader context of Muir’s confinement and sterilization. Namely, that it was rooted in the eugenics movement, whose proponents believed that the human race could be “improved” by controlling who could reproduce. This belief underpinned the sterilization legislation enacted in both Alberta and British Columbia to prevent people with “undesirable” characteristics from procreating to ensure they did not pass on their “disabilities” to future generations.7 The legislation and sterilization of persons perceived to be living with disabilities persisted notwithstanding the existence of scientific evidence at that time that the “undesirable” characteristics were not hereditary. Such a perspective was clearly a project in social engineering to create the “perfect” human race and society and a mechanism...

The growth in precarious employment and an escalating crisis in social reproduction suggest increasing retirement insecurity for Canadians, particularly for those (mainly women) doing unpaid care work over their life cycle. Reforms aimed at redistributing paid work time and the sex/gender division of labour have the most transformative potential.

To complement our special issue on feminism, law, and film, we called for short submissions from feminist colleagues telling stories about the ways in which they have used film in the law school classroom. It is so rare that we share with each other the innovative pedagogies that we use on a daily basis, so this is a way to have at our fingertips a catalog of moments in which teaching law has been enhanced through the use of film.

This chapter critically assesses the Canadian reality television show Til Debt Do Us Part. The programme follows couples and families as they receive financial “makeovers” and learn to manage their finances “responsibly." The chapter begins with an overview of the series and provides an overview of the series, describes the format of a typical episode, and discusses the mechanisms it uses to encourage audience participation and investment in the programme. The second section situates the television series within the reality TV genre, and looks specifically at the ways in which it fits within the reality TV subgenres of game shows and lifestyle programming, particularly shows that focus on self-improvement and transformation through consumerism and consumption. The third part of the chapter analyses Til Debt Do Us Part both empirically and textually. It looks first at the socio-economic location of participants, who it turns out generally have the means to become debt-free in a relatively short period of time provided they make ‘appropriate’ choices. Second, it looks at the messages about spending, savings, debt and responsibility that thread through the episodes, and reflects on the kinds of expectations and beliefs about financial management and responsibility that are constituted in the programme’s audience. I draw on the literature analysing financial literacy programmes as ‘regulatory projects’, and ask whether the financial literacy education in Til Debt Do Us Part can be understood as empowering — providing participants and viewers with tools to assist them as they participate in the market. Or alternatively, whether it is better understood as (1) reinforcing and normalising individual responsibility for managing risk and financial security; and (2) providing cultural support for the regulatory shift under neoliberalism that has been characterised by, among other things, a focus on decentralised governance, limited regulation of the market, and responsibilisation. I conclude that despite some of the empowering financial literacy features of Til Debt Do Us Part, the programme is best understood as cultural support for the responsibilisation that underpins the neoliberal regulatory project.