Introduction

The Law Commission of Canada / La Commission du droit du Canada

The Law Commission of Canada was created by Act of Parliament in 1996.¹ It closed its doors on December 15^th, 2007 following an announcement by the government little less than three months before, on September 25^th, that it was eliminating all of the Commission’s funding.² To reflect on the accomplishments of the Commission during its ten years of existence, the Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA) subsequently organized, jointly with the Canadian Association of Law Teachers and the Canadian Conference of Law Deans, a half day session at part of the annual Congress of the Learned Societies. A number of speakers were invited for the occasion, including the first two presidents of the Commission, Roderick A. Macdonald and Nathalie Des Rosiers, whose contributions are reproduced in this issue.

Given the long and fruitful partnership between the CLSA and the Commission it is only fitting that the contribution of the Commission be celebrated in a special section of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society. All along the Commission endeavoured to pursue an inclusive and multidisciplinary approach to law and was able to do so in great part due to the active support of associations such as the CLSA. Many of the discussion papers and final reports of the Commission were influenced by sustained dialogue that the Commission had with members of the CLSA in conferences, informal meetings and collaborative projects.

The distinctive nature of the work carried out by the Commission owes much to its first two presidents. Prior to his appointment as first president of the Commission, Roderick A. Macdonald wrote an influential article which laid out his vision of what law reform should be.³ In tandem with Nathalie Des Rosiers, initially vice-president of the Commission and later its second president, they ensured that the Commission took, as mandated by its legislation, an open, inclusive, responsive, multidisciplinary and cost effective approach to law. Their engagement in the work of the Commission went beyond their tenure, as commissioners and staff members continued to rely on their advice long after they left the Commission. It also went beyond the life of the Commission itself as they now reflect in this issue on their experiences at the Commission and contemplate what shape law reform should take in the future.

As Nathalie Des Rosiers explains in her article, the Commission was first and foremost an experiment in the democratization of law reform, notably through an enlargement and rebalancing of the actors involved in the process of law reform and a reconceptualization of research projects.

The pursuit of law reform through an independent commission is by no means new. In fact, the model for the Commission was very much a result of the lessons learned from the previous Law Reform Commission of Canada.⁴ I believe that what made the LCC unique was its constant effort to create space for disciplines other than law and for new voices to participate in the dialogue on the relevance of existing laws and the need for reform. The record will show that projects undertaken by the LCC were, at their inception, a result of wide consultations and that this consultative process continued throughout the entire development of each of these projects. The great number of innovative and diverse tools used by the Commission to reach this objective is testimony to its determination to reach out to a vast public. Nathalie Des Rosiers also highlights the importance that the Commission attached to building lasting partnerships with various groups. The benefits of partnerships are many: they bring together stakeholders with common concerns; they capitalize on existing knowledge; they make possible activities which would otherwise have been too costly; they forge new networks and strengthen existing ones, and, more generally and most importantly, they add new participants in the dialogue on law reform. One would hope that one of the lasting legacies of the Law Commission will be to have developed within civil society an expectation that, whatever form a law reform agency takes in the future, it should, as part of its key...