Terms of Use

User Agreement

1. Every person who accesses the CanLII website consents, as a User, to the terms of use stated in the present document and to the fact that the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) reserves the right to amend these terms from time to time.

Privacy Protection

2. CanLII abides by Canadian and international standards with regard to user privacy protection. CanLII does not collect personal information about Users without their consent, and has set up means to keep personal information confidential. CanLII retains reputable network services providers that comply with best practices in this industry's confidentiality undertaking. Users' anonymity is therefore reasonably protected but not fully guaranteed. The CanLII website's management of personal information is described more fully on the Privacy Policy page.

Reproduction and Copyright

3. CanLII and Lexum, reserve the intellectual property rights pertaining to the CanLII website's graphic, navigation and search tool design.

4. Subject to the following paragraph and the below conditions pertaining to prohibited use, legal materials published on the CanLII website, such as legislation, decisions and commentary, including editorial enhancements inserted into the documents by CanLII such as hyperlinks and information in headers and footers, can be copied, printed and used by Users free of charge and without any other authorization from CanLII, provided that CanLII is identified as the source of the document.

5. Use of legal materials published by CanLII can be subject to additional conditions set by their sources:

1. courts and government bodies may claim intellectual property rights relating to their documents. CanLII makes an effort to indicate the existence of additional conditions on the pages of the relevant databases (see for instance the conditions that apply to Quebec legislation), but Users remain responsible for checking whether the intended use of the documents is authorized;
2. books, journals and other works present in CanLII's Commentary section are reproduced with permission from their author or publisher. Unless otherwise stated at the top of each published work, Users are allowed to make copies of the work only for legal research purposes, in the practice of law or in the exercise of their legal rights.

Prohibited Uses

6. Notwithstanding the reproduction rights granted in the preceding section, the following uses of CanLII's website are prohibited:

1. Incorporating published documents into another website but masking their origin or source through framing, re-use of search processes, or any other means so as to create confusion and misrepresent the fact that the documents come from the CanLII website;
2. External indexing of published documents by Web robots when such use is not authorized by the instructions in the robots exclusion file at <http://www.canlii.org/robots.txt> or in a META tag in the HTML code of a published document, in compliance with the Robots Exclusion Protocol;
3. Bulk or systematic downloading of documents, including via programmatic means or, for greater certainty, the hiring of human resources used to manually download documents.

7. CanLII reserves the right to block, at its discretion and without prior notice, any User from accessing its website if the User misuses the website or uses it for illegal purposes.

Disclaimer of Warranty

8. CanLII puts considerable effort into maintaining its website and constantly improving the quality of the databases and documents it publishes. However, CanLII, Lexum and the CanLII website's partners, including the entities and authors who provided materials for inclusion in CanLII's Commentary section, provide no warranty and make no claims as to the reliability, accuracy or integrity of the website's content or functioning.

9. For instance, Users should be aware that some decisions on the website may no longer be applicable as a result of changes in the law, may have been overturned in appeal (or in the process of being appealed), or may have been found wrong or inapplicable in a more recent decision from the same court or a different one. In addition, we do not systematically verify or update the content of every document published in CanLII's Commentary section and these documents may contain inaccurate information including about the current state of the law in Canada. To get advice or a legal opinion on a particular situation, please consult a licensed legal professional in your jurisdiction.

Disclaimer of Liability

10. The documents published on the CanLII website have been collected and prepared for Users' convenience, and uniquely for informative purposes; they are in no way legal advice. More precisely, nothing on the CanLII website should be interpreted as being a legal opinion, a recommendation on how to act, or an answer that applies directly to a specific situation. Despite the care taken in preparing and maintaining its website, CanLII, Lexum and their directors, employees, managers and other officers can in no way be held responsible for damages caused directly or indirectly by the use of the CanLII website or by its non-availability.

Applicable Law

11. Use of the CanLII website is governed by the federal and provincial legislation in force in the Province of Quebec, Canada. Any legal action against CanLII with regards to CanLII website use shall be brought before the courts of the District of Montreal in the Province of Quebec.

Changes to these Terms of Use

12. These Terms of Use may be amended from time to time. Any amendments will be effective as of the last date of amendment stated at the beginning of these Terms of Use.