The untethered lawyer

The Quintessential NAFTA negotiation guide The US political extravaganza has provided substantial entertainment for the world and Canadians. We have been able to distance ourselves somewhat from the rhetoric. However Canada now finds itself within the Trump World ‘Splash Zone’. NAFTA ‘tweaking’ has surfaced and to paraphrase the President, we are renegotiating the North American ‘Stupid Trade’ Agreement. NAFTA has provided great benefits to all three countries and created an economic juggernaut of more than $20 trillion GDP. But the US appears to be following a new policy that not only must they succeed, all others must fail. The recent US Trade Representative (USTR) NAFTA aspirational paper states that “since the deal came into force in 1994, trade deficits have exploded, thousands of factories have closed, and millions of Americans have found themselves stranded, no longer able to utilize the skills for which they had been trained.” This sounds similar to your spouse of 23 y...

The New Immortals Immortals shall soon walk among us. They may also crawl, roll and perhaps hover. Yes, definitely hover.  The immortals refer to artificially intelligent persons (AIPs), and by ‘us’ I mean natural persons. The European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs recent report recognized that humankind stands on the threshold of an era of sophisticated robots and other manifestations of artificial intelligence ("AI"). The Committee saw the need to legislate this area relatively quickly as self-driving cars are making their appearance. The fundamental question is what sort of legal status should be granted to AIPs. Natural persons want to avoid any “Battle of the AIPs” future scenarios. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus, dramatically starts off the Committee’s report. The Committee thought that by addressing people’s real concerns up front, they could deal with the more substantive issues. The Committee recognizes that people have fantasi...