Past Projects
Criminal Law Workshop Series
Each week, a different criminal law professor presented a draft article or book chapter on Zoom and received feedback from participants. This semester’s guests included Mugambi Jouet (USC), François Tanguay-Renaud (Osgoode Hall), Danardo Jones (Windsor) Lisa Kerr (Queen’s University), Ben Ewing (Queen’s University), Ryan Liss (Western), Terry Skolnik (uOttawa), Sylvia Rich (uOttawa), and Maria Dugas (Dalhousie), Danardo Jones (University of Windsor), Debra Parkes (UBC), Janine Benedet (UBC), Graham Mayeda (uOttawa), and Sarah-Jane Nussbaum (University of New Brunswick).
The Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue Water Law and Governance Project
Fresh water, humankind’s most precious natural resource, is largely unregulated and depleting rapidly. The climate crisis will exacerbate these difficulties in the coming years. Addressing groundwater depletion is particularly urgent. Fifty percent of the world depends on groundwater for drinking water, but by 2030, the planet will face a 40 per cent shortfall in water supply unless management of this resource is drastically improved. Canadian experts have repeatedly called for a national strategy on water.
As consultations are taking place on the creation of a Canada Water Agency, now is key moment to critically examine existing policies on the management, preservation and regulation of water in Canada.
Working with the Centre on Governance and the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability, and funded by the Smart Changes for a Better World initiative of the Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue, the Water Law and Governance Project seeks to foster exchange between scholars, governmental actors, interest groups and the general public to identify and respond to key water-related public policy concerns.
Led by Professor Marie-France Fortin, the project team will seek to develop multi-level policies and model regulations aimed at the sustainable management of freshwater resources
Commemorative Naming Directed Research Course
Municipal landmarks such as pools, arenas, community centres, stadiums, parks, streets and libraries shape the landscape of everyday urban life. Indeed, the way we name public spaces says as much about the identity and memory of our cities as it does about the symbolic infrastructure of public spaces. For marginalized groups, their inclusion in the topography of Canada’s major cities has emerged as a form of transformative justice from which many re-naming campaigns have emerged.
In October 2020, the name John A. Macdonald was removed from Queen’s Faculty of Law. In June 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the re-naming of the historic Langevin Block. Both re-namings were the result of these historical figures’ associations with residential schools and Indigenous assimilation policies.
Over the past decades, commemorative naming has been studied almost exclusively by geographers, anthropologists, historians, linguists, urban planners and political scientists. This directed research course, led by Professor Vanessa MacDonnell, Co-Director of the uOttawa Public Law Centre, and Stéphanie Plante, considers the role of law in the commemorating naming process. This directed research course will produce background papers comparing commemorative naming procedures and laws in Canada’s major cities and suggesting improvements to these policies. It also includes an applied component, with students working actively on a commemorative naming initiative.
