“Everyone gets the same benefit” sounds like the definition of fairness until you look at who gets squeezed when the rules change. We start with a Surrey teachers’ parental leave top-up dispute that has taken a surprising turn: adoptive parents argue that equal top-up pay can still be discriminatory because adoption can bring immediate, higher support needs for children, including trauma histories, disability, or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We unpack how the policy evolved from older, birth-mother-only benefits, through earlier discrimination findings, and into a negotiated model where all new parents receive the same top-up. Then we dig into the key legal question now headed to the Human Rights Tribunal: can identical treatment create disproportionate harm that human rights law must address?

Next, we shift to criminal law and the rare reality of perjury charges. Michael Mulligan explains a case where a man, acquitted of manslaughter after a fatal one-punch incident, later pleaded guilty to perjury for lying under oath about whether his relationship had ended. We break down why courts treat perjury as so serious, how sentencing is assessed, and why the BC Court of Appeal upheld a 20-month jail term even where the lie might feel “peripheral.”

We close with consumer protection and the Competition Act concept of drip pricing, using the Honk Mobile parking app class action as a real-world example. Nearly a million people are part of the settlement, with an average claim around 35 cents, raising practical questions about notice, redemption by promo code, and whether small-dollar justice actually reaches consumers.

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Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discussed.

A government can detain someone for mental health reasons, but can it also force treatment without first asking a harder question: are they actually capable of deciding for themselves? We walk through a major British Columbia decision on involuntary treatment under the Mental Health Act, where the court finds a section 7 Charter breach because director-approved treatment can override a patient’s wishes without a meaningful capacity process. Along the way, we unpack why consent, bodily autonomy, and dignity are not optional extras in Canadian health law, even when the patient is involuntarily hospitalized.

We also dig into what changed midstream, including the repeal of “deemed consent”, and why that still didn’t fix the underlying problem. BC stands out compared with other provinces that use capacity assessments, advance directives, representation agreements, or substitute decision-makers to navigate informed consent and psychiatric care. The court suspends its ruling for six months, putting pressure on the province to amend the legislation or consider an appeal, while leaving the policy design to elected lawmakers.

Then we pivot to a Supreme Court of Canada ruling with national impact: Parliament cannot legislatively prevent judicial review of administrative decisions. Using the WE Charity conflict of interest complaint and Democracy Watch’s challenge as the backdrop, we explain how the rule of law and section 96 of the Constitution Act protect the superior courts’ core role in reviewing whether government power is exercised lawfully and reasonably. If you care about mental health rights, government accountability, and the real meaning of the rule of law in Canada, this one connects the dots. Subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review, then tell us: where should courts draw the line on state power?

Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discssed.

One word can change everything when it comes from a legal regulator. We dig into the BC Law Society’s mandatory Indigenous education course, the controversy over how it described the Kamloops Residential School site, and why some lawyers pushed to add a qualifier like “potential” when claims have not been independently confirmed. When that request was publicly framed as racist and then amplified through the Law Society’s own channels, the dispute escalated into a defamation lawsuit and ended with a settlement that included revised course wording, removed material, and a carefully worded public statement.

From there, we zoom out to the bigger Canadian legal questions sitting behind the headlines: how professional regulators should communicate, how accusations of racism should be made responsibly, and what it would mean if governments moved toward criminalizing “residential school denialism” as hate speech. It’s a conversation about truth claims, harm, and the risks of turning contested facts into mandatory orthodoxy.

We also break down a BC Adoption Act decision that shows how consent really works when a step-parent adoption is opposed by a biological parent. A nine-year-old’s views, a father’s substance-use struggles, and the court’s “best interests of the child” analysis collide in a ruling that legally severs one relationship while still urging space for connection when it’s safe, and the child wants it. If you care about Canadian law, family law, defamation, and freedom of expression, subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review with your take on where the line should be.

Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discussed.