Minutes of the June 19, 2008 Meeting

Attendees: Louise Hamel, Alisa Posesorski, Michael Cowle, Rick Leech, Grace Mackness, Jennifer Jordan, Ruth Rintoul and Frédéric Pelletier.

The teleconference is chaired by Frédéric Pelletier and Ruth Rintoul. It begins at 13:00 EDT.

The goal of this meeting is to resume discussions from the meeting of June 12, 2008, on the draft of the The Uniform Preparation of Decisions. The remaining items on the agenda are as follows:

• 4) Footnotes and endnotes (Section 4.2)
• 5) In force date when citing legislation (Section 4.2.2)
• 6) Non word-processing files
• 7) Case Naming Guidelines (Appendix)

The notes for these minutes are taken by Ruth Rintoul and Frédéric Pelletier.

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4) Footnotes and endnotes (Section 4.2)

Consensus: The following changes will be made to the wording of para. [39]:

• change “footnotes” and “endnotes” to “notes”
• recommend the proper use of word processing functions so that during conversion to other formats all links to and from the notes will remain intact and acurate.

5) In force date when citing legislation (Section 4.2.2)

Following Alisa's comment, the proposed wording “as coming into force on” is precise but rather inelegant. According to some members it could even denote a date in the future. We need another way of expressing what version of the legislation is being referred to.

Rick reminds us that an attendee of the CCC business meeting at the CALL conference in Saskatoon suggested “as amended to”, followed by the citation to the last amending statute rather than a date. For example: “as amended to S.O. 2005, c. 15, s. 8”. The reader would then be responsible for establishing the specific “in force” date of this amendment, but at least the last amending statute would be clearly indicated.

Frédéric agrees that even if this format is not as informative for the reader with regard to the specific date, it is less risky with regard to the meaning and precision of the information that is provided. The citation to the last amending statute is easily found in the legislative history of each amended provision in consolidated legislation, so authors of reasons will be more inclined to provide this data to the reader.

Consensus: The UPD will propose tu use "(as amended to [citation to amending enactment])" to express what version of legislation is being referred to.

6) Non word-processing files

Frédéric: In drafting the proposed consolidation, the assumption was that courts would always be able to incorporate non-word-processing files into the body of the decisions. But certain members of the CCC commented that sometimes the files were too large.

Consensus: The former rule (from the Standards now in place) about non word-processing files will be retained and revised, including its file naming convention.

7) Case Naming Guidelines (Appendix)

A document summarizing the issues raised by members' e-mails was circulated by Ruth to CCC members. This document serves as a basis for our dicussion, which is now chaired by Ruth.

In the course of these discussions, several general case naming issues are raised. The conclusions of the Committee are grouped together and summarized as follows:

• The Committee reasserts the goals of case naming as they were established in the past. The guidelines should:
• Allow for the easy creation of a short, concise and simple case name that will serve as a meaningful informal reference tool in the long term.
• Provide consistency for the print publishers who are compiling printed Case Tables, assuming that if we can reduce the amount of work that publishers must do in revising the case names received from the courts, we reduce the cost of publications, to the benefit of all involved in the administration of justice and legal publishing of all kinds.
• Satisfy different needs of courts and tribunals since some would only use simplified, basic rules and others ask for more detailed guidance.
• The case naming rules devised by this Committee may be stronger and more daring since they are adopted for long-term implementation.
• The basic rules should be presented in a manner that avoids duplication of examples and better establish links with the more detailed guidelines.

7.1) non-standard examples (Rule 23 – Core Government Entity)

Ruth: The issue here is the removal of designations such as "Minister of", "Department of", "Minister responsible for", "Minister of State for" or "Secretary of State for", and a new focus on the “core activity” of the government body.

Ruth asked the print publishers to comment on their work on printed case tables, and specifically on their revisions to court-assigned case names to provide standardized government names.

• Grace: At Carswell, they ensure that the geographic name precedes all names of government entities. They use the name as found on the decision, so the result might be, for example, a block of entries under “Nova Scotia (Minister of Health)” and a second block of entries under “Nova Scotia (Department of Health)”.
• Michael: At Canada Law Book they basically use the old CLIC Rules for government entities.
• Alisa: Since Irwin Law does not publish caselaw, the issue is of less concern to them. The only time they do have a problem is when they compile Case Tables in textbooks, where they sometimes must reconcile conflicting names for the same case.

Consensus: The guidelines will adopt Ruth's document new focus on the "core activity" of the body, like “British Columbia (Employment Standards)”.

7.2) Divisions of organizations (Rule 15)

Ruth: The concern was that the wording of the proposed Rule 15 was unclear and over-complicated. In Ruth's document the current 3 options have been reduced to 2 options. The focus is no longer on the location of the Division name within the full name, but rather on using the Division name alone if it can stand alone.

Consensus: Members need a chance to study the wording and respond by e-mail.

7.3) Groups (Rule 21)

Consensus: Michèle raised a valid concern that dropping the term “Group of” is wrong and misleading. We should revise the Rule accordingly.

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In order to streamline our next discussions, Frédéric invites CCC members to exchange their views by e-mail on the outstanding issues, based on Ruth's document, and perhaps have another call in about 3 weeks time.

The meeting ended at 14:00 EDT.