As what happens from time to time, the Supreme Court of Canada hands down a ruling and all of the government’s plans get messed up. Granted, that seems to be happening a lot more frequently these days, given that this government has a penchant for pushing the rules as far as they can and not listening to the legal advice they’re given. It happened again yesterday, with a unanimous ruling on a child pornography case that clarified the rules around warrantless access for online data – particularly metadata and ISPs. The Court has judged that these kinds do indeed constitute searches under the law, and that police need warrants (barring exigent circumstances, of course). This puts a huge hole in two government bills, C-13 and S-4, the “cyberbullying” bill and the digital privacy bill respectively, as both deal with data sharing including lawful access provisions. With the Court now having come down against lawful access – a decision being cheered by the new federal privacy commissioner as well as his Ontario counterpart – it’s likely to force the government to put the bills on hold (and indeed, they delayed further debate on S-4 in the Senate to consider the Supreme Court judgement). And hey, this might even mean that they’ll split the actual cyberbullying portions out of C-13 in order to “further consider” the next steps on the rest of the lawful access provisions that they were trying to get in under the rubric of “protecting children.” Then again, they could just as easily forge ahead and force yet another confrontation with the Supreme Court, as they seem intent on doing with everything else, in order to keep playing the victim card and fundraising off of it.

On the topic of the Supreme Court, Justice Gascon was formally sworn in during a private ceremony at the Court, a public ceremony to take place later. So the bench is once again full in preparation for the fall sitting of the court. Elsewhere, Harper made thirteen other judicial appointments yesterday, and it was indeed noticed that only one of them was a woman, which is a pattern that makes no actual sense given the depth of female jurisprudence in this country. One of those appointments sent a Federal Court judge over to the Quebec Court of Appeal. Why this is noteworthy is because that judge was on the list of potential appointees that gave us Justice Nadon, giving rise to the possibility that Harper is grooming this judge to replace Justice LeBel when his seat becomes vacant in November.

Justice Canada officials talk to Maclean’s John Geddes about the new prostitution bill, and why they think it will survive a constitutional challenge. Basically the thought is that the bill’s preamble, which states that the government is trying to make prostitution basically illegal in order to protect the vulnerable and because they consider it a form of sexual exploitation, will mean that the law needs to be judged from those merits instead, and that it will inoculate it. I’m not sure that the point that driving the practice further underground, thus putting the health and safety of sex workers at greater risk, will be similarly protected from challenging the bill on the Charter grounds of security of the person. That, and the inclusion of things like schools and religious institutions as exacerbating factors may be seen as too arbitrary for the Court to support it.

The government wants doctors and medical marijuana users to periodically hand over their records to provincial authorities the way that they do with prescription programmes for other controlled substances, all under the guise of preventing abuse. Where this is different from the existing programme is that there is no “lethal dose” of medical marijuana, so it raises all kinds of questions about the necessity of turning over those records.

At the Global Petroleum Show in Calgary, the Northern Gateway pipeline won all kinds of praise, as one might expect. A decision from cabinet is due by Tuesday.

After some delay, the Liberals have posted their quarterly expenses, and they are secure in the knowledge that soon it will be House of Commons staff and not their own that will have to go through the effort thanks to a unanimous motion that passed the Commons last year.

Senators are looking to create a mechanism for political staffers to move to long-term disability plans if they become disabled during the course of their employment, rather than the current complicated system where those staffers don’t have much choice other than unpaid leave. Because those staffers work directly for senators on yearly contracts, it makes these kinds of benefits negotiations that much more difficult than those who work for Senate Administration.

Former PMO spokesperson Andrew MacDougall writes about anonymous online commenters making the political conversation less civil, and that it’s lazy to think that trolling on Twitter will affect change rather than hard work in the political trenches.

And the voter turnout was up in the Ontario election, to levels not seen in 24 years, and there was in part because of close races, though that wasn’t the whole picture. It may also be worth noting that voter turnout was also up in Quebec in their recent election, which may also be an indication that people get more engaged in more contentious races. As well, the new Ontario legislature will now be made up of 35 percent women – a great new high. (By comparison, the Commons is about 25 percent women).