Profs. Anna Lund, Andrew Leach and Moin Yahya feature in new Alberta Law Review

Three University of Alberta Faculty of Law professors have new publications in the latest Alberta Law Review, bringing to light research on several key issues society is grappling with today in Canada and beyond.

Associate Professor Anna Lund

Associate Professor Anna Lund contributes a timely article to the journal with “Uncertainty Over the Scope of Borrower Protections in Mortgage Enforcement Proceedings In Alberta: The Problems And Potential Solutions.”

Her publication dissects Alberta’s complicated legal framework surrounding protections for borrowers in mortgage enforcement proceedings, a set of rules that more people are dealing with today as interest rates increase and it becomes tougher to afford monthly payments. 

Lund examines how protections, including statutory ones — default redemption periods and protection from deficiency judgments — are available to some but not all borrowers. 

She contends that navigating the rules governing who is entitled to these protections is overly- complicated for individual homeowners, many of whom cannot afford legal counsel when facing foreclosure. 

The article offers key solutions such as education initiatives aimed at borrowers, enhanced disclosure obligations for lenders and reforming the scope of protections. 

Lund argues that implementing these solutions will help Albertans know their legal protections, and help keep them housed, in a fraught borrowing world.

Professor Andrew Leach

Professor Andrew Leach is co-author with Nigel Bankes, professor emeritus at the University of Calgary, of “Preparing for a Mid-Life Crisis: Section 92A at 40.” 

The article offers extensive analysis of the Canadian constitution’s resources amendment (92A), originally intended to solidify the legislative and executive authority of provincial governments, as it has been interpreted over the four decades since its introduction. 

One recent example Leach and Bankes explore is the 2021 interpretation of 92A involving interprovincial trade in BC v Alberta (Turn Off the Taps), where British Columbia challenged Alberta’s ‘Turn Off the Taps’ legislation.

Looking at the history of 92A proves instructive as Leach and Bankes explore how it might be best interpreted going forward, amidst tensions over the construction of new pipelines, greenhouse gas emission policy and federal environmental impact assessment legislation.

The authors point out that the Supreme Court’s eventual clarification of its position on 92A will be crucial as current intergovernmental conflicts, and further ones on the near horizon, test provincial jurisdiction over natural resources and electricity and reconcile resource development and fossil fuel power generation with action on climate change.

Professor Moin Yahya 

Professor Moin Yahya appears in the latest ALR with a review of Trade And Commerce: Canada’s Economic Constitution (McGill-Queen’s University Press) by Professor Malcolm Lavoie, also of the U of A Faculty of Law.

Yahya calls the book, which looks to the Constitution to solve the evergreen issue of different levels of government claiming jurisdiction over various economic matters, both scholarly and accessible.

He highlights Lavoie’s argument that the Constitution was deliberately designed to allocate power to whichever level of government is most capable of efficiently administering it, and it is well-equipped to guide a truly integrated national economy which also respects local autonomy.

Yahya concludes that the book is a unique and important contribution to the field, as Lavoie uses both theory and historical context, looking back to scholarship from the time of the Constitution’s framing. 

It’s through this approach, the article notes, that Lavoie effectively argues that economic efficiency, interprovincial free trade and property rights should be lenses applied more often by courts deciding on jurisdictional matters today.