Volume 28, numéro 1, 1987

EN :

This paper focusses on the relationship between technological change and the labour relations system circumscribed by the Québec Labour Code.

While a teleological interpretation of bargaining rights of certified associations by labour jurisdictions seems to have dealt adequately with the impact of such changes on certification, the doctrine of residual management rights, in the context of fixed-term agreements entrenched in the Québec Labour Code, appears to be, in the opinion of the author, unduly rigid and restrictive.

The Freedman Report on Railway run-through and the subsequent discussions surrounding the Woods Commission Report in the 1960's, resulted in the inclusion in the Canada Labour Code of provisions pertaining to the possible adjustment, through collective bargaining, of collective agreements in the context of such technological changes. Various provisions to the same effect have subsequently been inserted in the Labour Codes of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British-Columbia.

The Report of the Beaudry Commission recently proposed that the Québec Labour Code be similary modified by the inclusion of analoguous provisions. The author suggests that a reform along the lines thus suggested is, in principle, desirable to ensure a more equitable adaptability of our legal categories to the imperatives of technological change.

EN :

Since 1978 the evaluation of pecuniary loss resulting from personal injury genuinely derives from the restitutio in integrum principle. In this context the operation of discounting the portion of the lump sum indemnity representing the victim's future losses takes on particular importance. The method used by the Supreme Court has been considerably improved: the refusal to consider interest rates and inflation rates separately, the recognition of a productivity factor for losses representing future salaries, etc. Four provinces have decided to legislate on one or more discount rates to make up for the absence or inadequacy of evidence at this level. Despite legislative and courtroom activity, much remains to be done in improving both the present legal system and its replacement by a regime better adapted to the specific problems inherent in evaluating pecuniary losses.

EN :

This study is based on the following assumption : some legal theories are upset and then turned against the very interests they were supposed to defend. This phenomenon is quite revealing of the nature of the legal process and how legal thinking works. Many explanations have been advanced, however, they all have been rejected since they presume a unity of knowledge and, without proving their point, they assimilate legal reasoning into other sciences that are presented as models for legal thinkers. The upsetting of legal theories may be explained due to the extreme complexity found in the meaning of words used to express legal concepts: this produces a semantic sedimentation with lasting and multiple virtual meanings without there being any way of guessing which one meaning may prevail in any given set of circumstances.

EN :

General assignment of book debts is a frequently used financing contract. Jurisprudence and doctrine have not yet determined its juridical nature in a sure and definitive way. They have qualified it as a pledge, a conditional sale, a giving in payment, a mortgage, a cession en pleine propriété à titre de garantie. Proposed in Quebec, France and England, these various qualifications nevertheless indicate that identital contracts having an identity of finality must correspond to a unity of juridical nature. The author then observes that this contract could well be a fiducia cum creditore or contract of fiduciary transfer already known in Roman Law.

EN :

The Supreme Court of Canada, obiter, in the Big M Drug Mart Case, has spoken of the "Constitutional Exemption". It is the possibility not to be bound to obey the neutral laws that conflict with one's conscience or religion. It is what we call in French l'objection de conscience.

The institution exists in Canadian and Québec Law as a part of the right to freedom of conscience or religion expressed in 2a) and 3 of the Canadian and Québec Charters of Rights. And it goes well beyond the right not to fight within the armed forces. The Supreme Court of Canada has actually delivered six judgments touching on the subject in 1985 and 1986.

The conditions under which l'objection de conscience come into play are not so well known however. Does it cover matters of worship or only rules of morals ? Secular or only religious principles ? Personal or only group beliefs ? Do the existence of the rule, the sincerity of the objector and the reasonableness of the exemption have to be proved? Above all, what is the difference between a creed and an opinion ?

The following article tries to formulate answers to these questions, with the help of current case-law.