The country that Canada's Supreme Court calls "safe" for refugees...

I asked the Federation of Law Societies for annual reports for @canlii.bsky.social They responded that these are secret CanLII's terms of use prohibit researchers & technologists from using bulk legal data to advance A2J What might the reports reveal about why they do that?

Who cares? 1 Nothing Trump says should be taken seriously 2 There's no point in pursuing trade deals with a US admin that breaks treaties 3 The sooner we reduce economic dependency on the US the better - and if the US wants to pay higher taxes / prices to help us do that, fine

I'm pleased to report that we have expanded the open source A2AJ.ca Canadian Case Law dataset to include the full text of 60,000 BCCA, BCSC, and YKCA decisions. They're available programmatically via API & MCP -- and for bulk download via Hugging Face datasets: github.com/a2aj-ca/cana...

Attempting to negotiate an international trade agreement with a delusional US President who has no respect for international (or domestic) law is a waste of time The only real option is to diversify trading partners & build alliances with actual liberal democracies

Frustrating. Seems to happen every year when any big grant deadline approaches. It impacts not just those working at the last minute on those grants, but everyone working on any application. Any planned solutions @sshrc-crsh.canada.ca?

A busy week... My @refugeelab.ca released our report about tech and alternatives to immigration detention, co-authored by @danghez.bsky.social & @petramolnar.com, and co-published with @kaldorcentre.bsky.social and @idcoalition.bsky.social: www.unsw.edu.au/content/dam/...

Hey Canadian JD students, and graduate students in any relevant discipline (including computer science, software engineering, data science): Interested in $10,000 to build open-source access to justice tools? a2aj.ca/student-inno...

Yeah, no thanks @lawandsociety.bsky.social I mean, I love SF But even if I was willing to spend $ in the US right now, travel to the US is not safe for anyone publicly critical of Trump -- which includes all law & society scholars who I would want to engage with

Edge case when parsing case SCC judgments: In 8 SCR 474, Justice Strong (later Chief Justice Strong) wrote a judgment, "mislaid" it, and told the reporter just to report the case without the judgment: www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/do...

Excellent new article involving an experiment in credibility assessments in trans refugee adjudication from folks at @mobileucph.bsky.social Great job ‪@astajarlner.bsky.social‬ ‬& Maya Ellen Hertz! doi.org/10.3389/fhum...

Delighted to share the news that the @refugeelab.ca has received a SSHRC Insight Grant to work on the use of technology at the Canada-US Border: www.yorku.ca/yfile/2025/0...

Judges who say witnesses are "not credible" mean: I think they're lying Saying that to a person who has reported experiencing sexual violence is deeply problematic There are other ways to find that the Crown has not met the burden of proof required to put someone in jail

The @refugeelab.ca has released a Consultation Report about research priorities in response to Canada's controversial Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act: refugeelab.ca/publications...

Legal tech edge case: Canada's Income Tax Act is too long for MongoDB...

Put up my pride flags today

I put together this AI agent guest presentation for the Standing Committee on Teaching & Learning at @osgoodenews.bsky.social Interesting to watch with a critical eye. How deep does the analysis go? What's missing? What biases are apparent? www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoh0...

The amount of time I spend trying to figure out how to handle null values (NaN, NaT, <NA>, Null, None) across pandas, parquet, mongo, and JSON (especially re: dates) is really absurd. Surely we could standardize all this...

By @refugeelab.ca Associate Director @petramolnar.com: The Trump administration’s move to ban international students at Harvard escalates attacks on universities theconversation.com/the-trump-ad...

The white supremacist idiocy on display at the White House yesterday was even more overt than usual. Why so many in the US simply accept this is beyond me Meanwhile, Canada contemplating new defense partnerships with a rogue state that threatens to annex us is equally perplexing

In these difficult times, we know it can be hard to keep up hope. But some happy news to share: @refugeelab.ca's @migrationtechmonitor.com launches our THIRD fellowship. Can't wait to work with 5 amazing colleagues from all over the world Learn more about their work and get in touch to collaborate!

Thanks @techpolicypress.bsky.social for the opportunity to reflect on social media surveillance and migration under the Trump Administration, referencing great work by @nanjala.bsky.social and @danmcquillan.bsky.social, and reporting by @aclu.org and @404media.co, among others

Back from a few days off after a great workshop on Comparative & Transnational Insights into Asylum Under Pressure. Now, on to grading and a large backlog of email -- sorry for anyone waiting for a response!

Was working today with a locally hosted reasoning language model to see how it performs in categorizing refugee law cases involving sexual orientation At one point the model (a distilled version of qwq 32) got stuck in a bisexual angst loop as it was "thinking"...

Super soirée hier à la Francophonie en fête avec Le Vent du Nord ! Had a great time last night at the Francophonie en Fête, with Le Vent du Nord!

Given more recent news, I'd now like to say: gross #PaulWeiss #alumni

There are lots of good reasons to be critical of Big Law. But, given the news, I'd like to say: I was a Summer Associate at Paul Weiss in New York in 2003, where, among other things, I worked to push back against the legal black hole that the US created in Guantanamo Bay

Some grant applications I recently submitted required Canadian "research security" processes I'm not a fan of these processes But if we are going to have them, why aren't partnerships with US government institutions considered to pose risks to "national and economic security"?

Phew! My @refugeelab.ca, along with amazing 30 co-aps & partners, sent off our SSHRC Partnership Grant to build an Algorithmic Justice for Refugees Research Network. Many thanks to @osgoodenews.bsky.social and @crsyork.bsky.social for hosting this project. Fingers crossed!

MTM director Petra Molnar @petramolnar.com with Just Security @justsecurity.org shares some of the border technologies under the second Trump administration. #humanrights #asylumseekers #bordertechBorder Technologies Under Trump 2.0 www.justsecurity.org/105662/borde...

Grrrr.... Trying to finish up a SSHRC PG and to help partners/co-apps around the world navigate the clunky SSHRC application system and this is not helping!

MTM 2023 Fellow @vmreports.bsky.social writes about the demise of the CBP One applications and the impacts on border communities in the age of Trump 2.0: www.migrationtechmonitor.com/blog/the-sud... #humanrights #bordercrossing #asylumseekers #bordertech #usmexicoborder

The @theglobeandmail.com should hire someone who understands numbers -- and who understands when they're being manipulated by people seeking political gain by beating up on refugees Enough already with these meaningless "rejection rates" www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...

Latest piece by Refugee Law Lab Associate Director @petramolnar.com theconversation.com/increased-su...

Finished up grading for my @osgoodenews.bsky.social Refuge Law class today. Yay! A few students got themselves in trouble with genAI hallucinations that made up citations So with that in mind: here's what AI thinks I look like grading. I particularly like the typewriter

The @theglobeandmail.com editorial board needs to work on its mathematical literacy They say 5% of claims were abandoned/withdrawn in 2015 vs 21% in 2024 Actually, it's 3.2% in 2015 vs 3.7% in 2024 Meanwhile, recognition rates have increased: 67.6% in 2015 vs 80.4% in 2024

Join the @refugeelawlab.bsky.social, the @citizenlab.ca and the @migrationtechmonitor.com for a conversation about migrant justice surveillance in the age of Trump 2.0 and beyond on December 19, 2024 at 12:00PM ET (online). For further details & registration: refugeelab.ca/event/migran...

Congrats to @simonwallace.bsky.social for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation at @osgoodenews.bsky.social Well done Dr. Wallace! Thanks to committee members: @amysalyzyn.bsky.social, @sonialawprof.bsky.social, @penney.bsky.social, Benjamin Berger & Özgün Topak

Oh, look: The thing that Canadian immigration law experts said would happen, happened Closing safe routes for asylum seekers doesn't reduce the number of asylum seekers. It increases irregular movement, enriches smugglers & puts lives at risk www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...

🚨Are you a person on the move interested in #BorderTech? Apply for our THIRD annual fellowship application with @migrationtechmonitor.com and @refugeelawlab.bsky.social! Application materials (in whatever language!) are due December 31st 2024 www.migrationtechmonitor.com/aboutmtmfell... A little🧵

Appalling news from the Cnd Gov’t on refugee sponsorship. I haven’t yet introduced myself but I write on refugees & the relationship b/w asylum & resettlement, warning we need to ensure the door is open to asylum as discretionary resettlement programs are vulnerable. www.canada.ca/en/immigrati...

New commentary from @meggaucher.bsky.social & me on Canada-US border & the dangerous language of loopholes. A sneak peak from our chapter in @emmettmacfarlane.com & @katepuddister.bsky.social forthcoming book Disciplinary Divides in the Study of Law & Politics! theconversation.com/why-the-lang...

Finished up my Refugee Law course at @osgoodenews.bsky.social last night. Left the students with a speech by the @fcjrefugeecentre.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy's Francisco Rico-Martinez -- who is missed, but whose words still have the power to open hearts.

Nice to see that @osgoodenews.bsky.social has joined us!

🚨New report by Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute on gender equality and diversity in AI Featuring @migrationtechmonitor.com in the discussion on power and representation. Report and policy brief: gpai.ai/projects/res... Watch live here: www.youtube.com/@mila-quebec...

Please share: We made a tentative starter pack of refugee law, migration law and mobility law scholars - will update it continuously; please add newcomers and anyone we missed. go.bsky.app/BGkdP53 #lawsky #migrationstudies #refugeestudies

Want to work programmatically with the text of Canadian legal decisions (including all Supreme Court of Canada decisions) but don't want to get sued by @canlii.bsky.social? Check out the Refugee Law Lab's bulk legal datasets: refugeelab.ca/bulk-data/

Starter pack for faculty, adjuncts, staff, etc, at Osgoode Hall Law School: go.bsky.app/P28f8BK