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Supreme Court hears Quebec common-law marriage case
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- Created on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 21:00
The Supreme Court of Canada is examining a landmark Quebec case that could affect spousal benefits for common-law couples in the province.
Lawyers for the Quebec government are arguing today that the province gives couples the right to settle their own affairs.
The case began several years ago when a wealthy Quebec businessman argued he shouldn't have to pay alimony to his ex-partner because they had never been married.
In an earlier ruling, a lower court decided that the man -- who was given the name Eric -- would not have to pay alimony to the woman identified as Lola.
The couple had children and lived together for seven years.
That court decision was overturned when the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled in Lola's favour.
Common-law couples have varying rights depending on where they live in Canada.
In some provinces, they have alimony and property rights.
But despite the fact that one-third of all Quebec couples are unmarried, it remains the only province that does not recognize common-law unions.
Lola was seeking a monthly payment of $56,000 for herself, a share of the family estate and a lump-sum payment of $50 million.
The man did give her a $2.5-million home and money to pay many of her other bills.
The couple were given the names Eric and Lola to protect the identities of their young children.
Bank of Canada says Europe will drag on growth
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- Created on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 20:54
The Bank of Canada says an intensifying European debt crisis is holding back growth in both the domestic and world economies. It forecasts that the crisis will curb Canadian economic growth by about 0.6 per cent this year, equivalent to about $10 billion in lost GDP.
The calculation marks the first time the bank has attempted to put a hard number on the spillover effects of the European sovereign debt drama.
In its latest monetary policy report on Wednesday, the central bank predicted Europe’s recession will last most of 2012, longer than it had predicted in its October report.
The bank said the debt crisis will not only cut into the growth in world trade, but also indirectly affect financial conditions, confidence and commodity prices.
The report came a day after the bank once again kept its key interest rate unchanged at 1.0 per cent.
It also predicted the eurozone crisis will shave more than one per cent off the global growth rate by the end of 2012 and 0.8 per cent from the United States’s previously projected expansion.
The bank estimated that Canada’s economy grew by 2.4 per cent in 2011 and projected that it will grow by 2.0 per cent in 2012 and 2.8 per cent in 2013. That compared with its projection in October for 1.9 per cent growth in 2012 and 2.9 per cent in 2013.
It called for inflation to moderate this year and then rise, reaching two per cent by the third quarter of 2013.
The bank once again sounded the alarm on high levels of Canadians’ personal debt.
"High household debt levels in Canada could lead to a sharper-than-expected deceleration in household spending," it said.
"If there were a sudden weakening in the Canadian housing sector, it could have sizable spillover effects on other areas of the economy."
The report included a revision from the bank's October outlook for growth in the U.S. economy in 2013, to 2.2 per cent, compared with its earlier projection of 3.3 per cent.
Report spurs speculation on interest rates
TD Bank economist Diana Petramala said the report suggests the bank will not raise interest rates this year.
“The central bank is unlikely to want to raise rates in an environment where global financial conditions are worsening,” she said in a commentary.
But Michael Gregory, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets, saw it differently, given the report’s mention of “a gradual reduction in monetary stimulus over the projection horizon.”
Gregory said with the bank’s expectation that Canada’s economy would be at full capacity by the fall of 2013, “we are bracing for some degree of rate hikes (no matter how modest) starting by the middle of next year.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” he said.
Google, Canadian groups join Wikipedia protest
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- Created on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 19:10
Google has joined Wikipedia and other sites around the world, including in Canada, to protest anti-piracy legislation being considered in the U.S. Congress.
In a statement, Vancouver-based pro-internet organization OpenMedia.ca, a non-profit organization that promotes an open and affordable internet, said it was joining the protest alongside domain registrar Tucows and microblogging service Identi.
Wikipedia's English-language site shut down at midnight ET Tuesday to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate. Both proposed laws are aimed at shutting down sites that share pirated movies and other content.
They are designed to crack down on sales of pirated American products overseas, and they have the support of the film and music industry. Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay and AOL, are among the opponents who say the bills would hurt the industry and infringe on free-speech rights.
Not only is OpenMedia.ca temporarily darkening its website in solidarity, it is also providing an online tool that allows Canadians to join their U.S. counterparts, and millions of people worldwide, in speaking out against controversial censorship bills.
In an email to CBC News, the group's executive director said internet users have a lot to lose if SOPA is passed because it could fundamentally reshape the internet in the U.S., Canada, and the rest of the world.
"We at OpenMedia.ca wanted to show our support for the protests against SOPA by going black. We hope that this will send a message to U.S. decision-makers that Canadians, in addition to their own constituents, will not stand for this bill," said Steve Anderson.
"It's important that Canadians are informed, engaged, and able to participate in the policy-making process. Clearly SOPA has deep ramifications for Canada; we wanted to give the pro-internet community here an avenue to express their concerns about this problematic bill."
Toronto-based Tucows, best known for its software downloading service, will shut down access to its site for 12 hours.
"We want them to really understand this type of legislation is not needed and our real goal is to get Americans to call their senators. That's a big part of what we're doing with the blackout," Tucow's vice president of products Ken Shafter told CBC News.
Canadians need to pay close attention to this fight said University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.
"Canadians who think they are safe from some of the provisions in SOPA need wait only a couple of years because it seems virtually certain the U.S. will pressure Canada and other countries to adopt similar kinds of measures in the future."
Similar laws are already being proposed here in Canada and Geist said they're troubling because they go far beyond what's necessary to protect Hollywood and the music industry from copyright infringement.
New York-based Appitalism —the first site to combine a social community with an online store to help consumers discuss and download digital content for all devices — joined the online demonstration by going dark starting at midnight sharp Tuesday night.
In an email to CBC News, Appitalism CEO Simon Buckingham said that passing the bills would infringe freedom of expression and severely damage online innovation.
"Because of SOPA, we've spent the day not serving customers but instead sitting on our sofa, because we believe that SOPA and PIPA will likely restrict people's access to online information, not just in the United States but around the world," Buckingham said.
"SOPA and PIPA impacts the way an independent user will use the internet. Passing this law would make it much more difficult for us to enjoy and benefit from the sites that we frequent on a daily basis."
Google.com's home page linked to a petition urging Congress: "Don't censor the Web." Social news website Reddit.com is shutting down for 12 hours on Wednesday, but most companies are staying up.
Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, said he opposes the legislation as well, but shutting down the service was out of the question. "Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish," Costolo tweeted.
The 24-hour Wikipedia blackout is an unprecedented move for the online encyclopedia. However, it's not a total blackout: the block can be bypassed by changing browser settings or by using the version of the site designed for cellphone screens.
"Our purpose here isn't to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it's okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message," Wikipedia said in a statement.
Instead of encyclopedia articles, visitors to the site saw a stark black-and-white page with the message: "Imagine a world without free knowledge." It carried a link to information about the two congressional bills and details about how to reach lawmakers.
It is the first time the English site has been blacked out. Wikipedia's Italian site came down once briefly to protest an internet censorship bill, which died, put forward by the Berlusconi government.
Blackout attracts support, criticism
A growing body of critics who are speaking out against the legislation, but some of Wikipedia's volunteer editors are so uneasy with the blackout that they have blacked out their own user profile pages or resigned their administrative rights on the site to protest. Some said the blackout is akin to fighting censorship with censorship and jeopardizes Wikipedia's pillars of conduct, which includes writing articles from a neutral point of view.
But Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales disagreed, tweeting, "The encyclopedia will always be neutral. The community need not be, not when the encyclopedia is threatened."
The Wikimedia Foundation, which administers the site, announced the blackout late Monday after polling its community of volunteer contributors and editors and getting responses from 1,800 of them.
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