Weaving a Safety Net: Justice Abella’s Impact on Family Law (Recording)
Cost
CBA members: $75
CBA Young Lawyer Members (<5 years): $65
CBA Student members: $25
Non-members: $165
Government: $105
Plus applicable taxes
Group rates available. Please contact pd@cba.org.
This is the 3rd webinar in the CBA Leadership Online Symposium for Professional Women. Registrants will receive an on-demand recording following each webcast. You can purchase the full online symposium at a package rate.
This session will be presented in English and French with simultaneous translation available. This presentation will be presented with Closed Captioning.
Presentation materials will be displayed in the language as submitted by the speakers.
Thursday, October 14, 2021 | 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM ET
11:30 am - 1:00 pm Weaving a Safety Net: Justice Abella’s Impact on Family Law (Recording)
Justice Abella began her judicial career on the family court, and broadened her impact on family law once she reached the Supreme Court of Canada. This panel will discuss how Justice Abella’s decisions have contributed to the development of family law in Canada, including on fundamental issues like retroactive child support, child support guidelines and variation of spousal support.
Some of Justice Abella’s most influential human rights jurisprudence has arisen in the context of family law disputes, such as her dissenting opinion in Quebec (Attorney General) v A, where Justice Abella would have found that the spousal support and property division provisions of Quebec’s Civil Code unjustifiably infringed the Charter for excluding unmarried cohabiting couples. In one of her most iconic decisions, Bruker v Marcovitz, Justice Abella penned the majority reasons to reconcile religious freedom with equality rights and hold a husband to his agreement to give his wife a “get” (a Jewish divorce) after their civil divorce.
Now that the legislative landscape of family law is changing with the new Divorce Act, how will Justice Abella’s jurisprudence continue to influence judicial interpretation of family law statutes?
Speakers:
Robert Leckey, McGill University
Robynne Kazina, Taylor McCaffrey LLP
The Honourable Associate Chief Justice Eva Petras, Superior Court of Québec
Moderator:
Shelley Hounsell-Gray, Q.C. (she/her), Blackburn Law
