The mission of the MLJ, as succinctly explained by Dr. Schwartz, is to bring “world-class scholarship to interests in our community.” This world-class scholarship is evident in the MLJ’s placement among top-ranked journals in Canada, according to Google Scholar citation metrics, and consistent winning of awards in the highly competitive SSHRC program for scholarly journals.

Volume 46 contains the inaugural issue of The Review of Enterprise and Trade Law dimension: “To get TRETL where it is was a massive undertaking,” explained Dr. Schwartz. “It is the culmination of work going back almost twenty-five years. It began with the creation of the Asper Review of International Business and Trade Law, which on its own became one of the top-ranked journals in Canada. Over the years, the Asper Chair collaborated with the Desautels Chair on projects such as our franchise law conference and book, which had a significant impact on the legislation here in Manitoba. With TRETL, we now have a combined effort of the two chairs to produce a regular publication reflecting the mandate of both. A further synergy has been achieved by fully integrating this journal into our thriving MLJ program.”

Readers of Volume 46 will find several issues forming part of the journal’s Underneath the Golden Boy dimension, which is concerned with legislation and public policy. Issues 1 and 3 are the first two of a trilogy focussing on our legal system in times of crisis: Issue 1, Canada’s Emergencies Act: Beyond the Rouleau Report, deals with the Emergencies Act and the controversy surrounding its use while Issue 3, Online Dispute Resolution: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, looks at the recent health crisis through both academic articles and oral-history interviews with local lawyers. The third and final issue of this trilogy, yet to be released, will focus on the perspectives of leading lawmakers and political figures in Manitoba in relation to the COVID crisis. Issue 2 steps away from the crisis lens and broadly reviews general developments in public policy and administration.

The three criminal law issues edited by Dr. Richard Jochelson and Assistant Professor Brandon Trask – 4, 5, and 6 – published under the Robson Crim dimension of MLJ, are wide-ranging. They include articles on wrongful convictions, legislative measures targeting proceeds of crime (even maple syrup), and incarcerees’ access to healthcare. These contributions, as with all of MLJ’s dimensions, are authored by students, faculty, and practicing professionals, and undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review process.

This dimensions-based approach allows the MLJ to focus on local issues through clear and specific lenses, while leaving the door open to national or international discussion of important fields more inherently (inter)national in scope.

The Executive Editors-in-Chief would like to thank the student-editorial teams at the MLJ and its Robson Crim dimension for their hard work in bringing this volume to fruition. As put by Professor MacPherson, “We congratulate and thank all the students for the time that went into getting this entire issue out the door. We really believe our readers will find something within its pages that is both academically rigorous and useful.”

Thank you to:

MLJ Student Editors

Selene Sharp

Vicky Liu

Apara Grace

AubrieAnn Schettler

Avery Alexiuk

Brayden Juras

Brent Tichon

Diana Gutierrez

Heather Peterson

Joshua Dondo

Steven Csincsa

Vilciya Rajput

All of the editors – both faculty and students – would like to thank Lily Deardorff, MLJs Digital Editor, for her co-ordinating efforts, guidance, and persistent positivity.

With Volume 47 already beginning pre-print, the MLJ is poised to continue delivering cutting-edge, readable, and independent legal commentary.

The torch of the Desautels Review was passed from former Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Virginia Torrie, to the MLJ’s Co-Editors-in-Chief Dr. Bryan Schwartz and Professor Darcy MacPherson. The excellent work done through Desautels by Dr. Torrie’s team has been invaluable and provides a strong foundation for TRETL, as does the Asper Review’s reputation as a leading publication in the realm of international business and trade law. The range of papers included in this issue set the stage for the many issues yet to be covered.

Photo credit: Joey Senft on Unsplash.

Contributors Sarah Richardson and Virginia Torrie each take different looks at an integral aspect of life, business, and economic trade in Manitoba: modern farming. Their respective articles are literally “barn burners” with Richardson raising a discussion of the regulatory and legal protections – or lack thereof – afforded to farmers and their livestock facing the very real issue of barn fires. Torrie looks back almost a century to the Great Depression and its impact on prairie farmers through the ensuing enactment of the Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act. Her article takes an empirical look at FCAA applications and whether this program has kept “the farmer on the farm” as it aimed to.

Darcy MacPherson discusses the remediation-agreement regime and the scandal within the SNC-Lavalin Affair. He asks whether said regime does enough to provide appropriate legal guidance to executive actors, and should a Prime Minister dancing the “Cabinet Shuffle” undermine decisions made by the previous Attorney General. MacPherson finishes by outlining concerns in the organization and wording of Subsection 715.32(2), and its reliance on “one-way factors.”

Joel Badali focusses on employment law in First Nations communities, the uneven application of Wilson v. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, and the principle therein that First Nations employers ought to be held to Provincial employment standards in all but specific cases. He looks to instances of inconstant application (i.e. in schools and Human Rights regimes), the effects that the competing jurisdictions would have, and argues for a more consistent application of Provincial jurisdiction.

Bradley Bryan also looks to Indigenous issues, specifically the constraints placed on Indigenous governments & Indigenous economic development corporations by limited partnership law. He outlines how inconsistent interpretation of legal rights and responsibilities between limited partnerships, limited partners, and Indigenous governing bodies has led to difficulties for Indigenous governments hoping to use limited partnerships for investments while protecting themselves from liability. Bryan illustrates through the lens of recent cases how this is currently hindering reconciliation and efforts at “inclusion without assimilation.”

Martin-Joe Ezeudo’s case comment on Ontario’s Libfeld v. Libfeld picks apart the convoluted web of business instruments and relationship/relational breakdowns over a multi-generational development empire, in order to explore the merit of the decision. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice was tasked with fairly untangling the four remaining brothers’ assets, “winding-up” an unusually structured partnership – one littered with corporate holdings, about 350 purpose-built corporate entities, and worth between $2.5-$4 billion.

Finally in a notable collaboration between professor and student, MacPherson and recent law graduate, Matthew London [JD/2024] offer a review of John Carreyrou’s book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies Inside a Silicon Valley Start-Up, a tale of the rise and fall of Theranos Inc. and its founder Elizabeth Holmes. This review provides a substantive summary of the work, as well as critical and theoretical insight to legal principles not fully delved into by this piece of popular literature, and why it should matter to a Canadian audience. For anybody who followed the Theranos scandal, this review is a must-read.

Read the MLJ’s Volume 46, Issue 7, The Review of Enterprise and Trade Law (2024) online on the Manitoba Law Journalwebsite.

A memorial service for Professor Nemiroff will be held tomorrow, Friday, June 14 at 10:00 a.m. at Chapel Lawn Funeral Home, 4000 Portage Avenue. Please read The Free Press Passages notice.

Nemiroff held a BSc (McGill), BA (Sir George Williams / Concordia), BCL (McGill), and an LLB and LLM from Dalhousie. He was called to the Manitoba Bar in 1972 and in the same year, was awarded the University of Manitoba’s Olive Beatrice Stanton Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1975, he was a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne, and taught at the University of Calgary in 1977.

Good at mathematics and physics, he nearly became a meteorologist, but ended up in law “because there were more spaces,” than applicants at the time, as he intimated to Dr. Bryan Schwartz in an interview for the Manitoba Law Journal 39:1 (136-190) regarding “The Great Transition in Legal Education.”

Nemiroff practiced Insurance Law in Quebec initially, but after completing his LLM on waiver, election and estoppel in the law of insurance, decided to pursue an academic career. Hired by late Dean of Law Cliff Edwards who was snapping up every LLM he could find for Manitoba’s law school, he taught Insurance Law and Negotiable Instruments, which he said he found “interesting and challenging and quirky.” Later, he also taught Contracts.

In Nemiroff’s interview with the MLJ, the editor notes that despite University policy that a professor can only win the Stanton Award for Teaching Excellence once in their career, Nemiroff’s students in his last year of teaching (2007 – 2008) asked the University to bend this policy, writing:

      Gerry Nemiroff is somewhat legendary at Robson Hall…

      A good law professor doesn’t just tell you what the state of the law is, or how the law has developed. They teach you how to find the law and more importantly they teach you how to use the law….

       …It wasn’t until my third and final year of law school that I learned how to properly read and understand a case. It was in Gerry’s [sic] Nemiroff’s Insurance Law class where I began to understand how to argue the law. (MLJ 39:1, p. 154)

The Faculty of Law extends condolences to Gerry’s family, friends and former colleagues and students for the loss of this legendary scholar and teacher.

Please learn more about Professor Gerald Nemiroff’s legacy in the Manitoba Law Journal.