The eQuality Project brings together a broad range of civil society, educational and government partners interested in exploring young peoples’ experiences online, specifically examining the targeting of youth and other vulnerable audiences by advertisers. The project seeks to answer the question of how society can create an equality enhancing and affirming environment that enables all young people to fully participate. The project takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of online behavioural targeting, other corporate practices, and cyberbullying as elements that shape the potential for a lived equality in networked spaces.  It marks an important contribution to legal scholarship in that it aims to ensure that the voices of young people from some of Canada’s most marginalized communities are heard by policymakers as the nation’s social, legal and cultural frameworks respond to our increasingly digitally networked and automated world.

Co-Directors: Jane Bailey (on leave) and Valerie Steeves

The uOttawa Legal Technology Lab is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Faculties of Law and Engineering, funded by Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), to conduct legal technology research and implement legal technology solutions at the University of Ottawa.  

The legal sector is changing. Law firms face growing pressures to provide more cost-effective services. Governments, industries and citizens are struggling with making evidence-based decisions on the basis of more and increasingly complex legal information. Legal expertise remains scarce, expensive and inaccessible resulting in a large unmet demand for legal services and an access-to-justice gap. Technology offers novel solutions to deal with these challenges.

Through the Centre for Law, Technology and Society (CLTS) and its world-class researchers, the University of Ottawa is already a leader in the technology law, ethics and policy space. The uOttawa Legal Technology Lab complements the existing activities of the CLTS through applied legal technology research and the implementation of legal technology projects.

Lead: Dr. Wolfgang Alschner (Faculty of Law, Common Law Section)

Co-Lead: Dr. Diana Inkpen (Faculty of Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

The Refugee Hub: The Refugee Hub works to increase protection and rights for refugees by engaging in research, collaborative partnerships, and innovative programming on the community, national, and international level. We work with researchers, citizens, political leaders, policy makers, and civil society to build opportunities and capacity to meet the protection needs of refugees through evidence-based policy and practice. In addition to providing in-depth research and expertise, the Refugee Hub houses a number of flagship initiatives that respond to current protection needs, engage in community support and connection, and mobilize direct action on refugee issues. These initiatives include the Refugee Sponsorship Support Program (SSP), the University of Ottawa Refugee Assistance Program (UORAP) and the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative (GRSI) amongst others

Directors: Jennifer Bond and Amy Bartlett

An initiative for a better understanding and framing of the ethical, legal and societal implications of AI by leveraging a transdisciplinary approach.

The AI + Society Initiative aims at defining problems and identifying solutions to essential issues related to ethical AI and technology development. The research leverages a transdisciplinary approach to advance AI methods and tools, with a focus on their responsible applications. 

The Initiative promotes an inclusive research agenda with a specific focus on avoiding the amplification of global digital injustices through AI for affected communities. The research will include many important voices such as women, youth, seniors, Indigenous People, LGBTQIA2S+, visible minorities, people with disabilities, and linguistic minorities – and those at the intersection of these identities.

Coordination:  Florian Martin-Bariteau

Often associated with cryptocurrencies, blockchain-based technologies are quickly working their way into every aspect of the Canadian legal landscape. Blockchain-based technologies link lists of records (called blocks) across multiple computers so that records cannot be retroactively altered.  These technologies are increasingly permeating the legal world, providing new opportunities to providers of legal services through innovative uses such as smart contracts. Law firms and lawyers are continuously adapting to market trends in an effort to remain competitive and to provide value to clients. But as is often the case with new technologies, law has difficulty keeping up with the innovations. As a result, the legal framework surrounding smart contracts is still murky. 

The Ottawa Blockchain Legal Lab conducts research on blockchain and decentralized ledgers, cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and more.

Lead: Florian Martin-Bariteau

Boasting nearly 50 professors from the Common Law and Civil Law Sections of the Faculty of Law, the Law and Social Justice Group engages in analysis and critique of the role of law in the development and maintenance of social, political and economic inequality. This critical perspective focuses in particular on historically marginalized groups such as women; those facing socio-economic disadvantage; immigrants and refugees; linguistic, ethnic, religious and racial minorities; aboriginal peoples; those with mental and physical disabilities; sexual minorities; the young and the aged.  Social Justice professors offer courses that critically examine law’s implication in constructing and maintaining historic and current social, political and economic inequalities, and law’s potential and limitations as an instrument of redistributive and egalitarian social, economic and political change.

The Refugee Hub’s Refugee Sponsorship Support Program (SSP) was established in 2015 to bring together sponsorship experts, pro-bono lawyers, law students, and community organizations to offer direct support to Canadians seeking to sponsor refugees. Created in 2015 in response to the refugee crisis, the SSP has three primary components:

• Direct sponsorship support, which provides sponsor groups with direct support from pro-bono lawyers and law students throughout the private refugee sponsorship application process.
• A training program in partnership with the Refugee Sponsorship Training Program (RSTP), which trains lawyers and law students on the completion of sponsorships, and provides ongoing support for their work through sponsorship experts.
• A public information program, which provides Canadians with resources and support regarding sponsorship.

Directors: Jennifer Bond and Amy Bartlett

The University of Ottawa Refugee Assistance Project (UORAP) is housed at the Refugee Hub, and was launched following the 2012 changes to Canada's refugee system. The project seeks to address key access to justice concerns for asylum seekers within Canada's claim system. UORAP is both a programmatic intervention on the community level as well as a larger research initiative. As a programmatic intervention, UORAP has developed resources and delivered training to over 300 community workers in 6 major refugee-hosting cities in Canada. This work includes a Hearing Preparation Kit for refugee claimants and an Online Training for community workers, including a Facilitator’s Guide and supplementary documents. As a larger research initiative, UORAP has continued its multi-year project to study the use of evidence in Canada’s refugee claim system.

Directors: Jennifer Bond and Amy Bartlett

The Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative (GRSI) is housed at the Refugee Hub, and works to assist and inspire countries around the world to open new pathways for refugee protection. We do this by sharing Canada’s history, experience, and leadership in private sponsorship and by supporting the creation of new programs that countries design to meet their unique needs. This work includes providing training and public education, community building, advisory services, and connecting networks for the purpose of expanding and promoting refugee protection on a global scale. The Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative (GRSI) is a partnership between University of Ottawa's Refugee Hub, the Open Society Foundations, the Government of Canada, UNHCR, and the Giustra Foundation. Visit www.refugeesponsorship.org

Directors: Jennifer Bond and Amy Bartlett

The uOttawa Community Legal Clinic provides legal services to the Ottawa community, including providing legal education, advocacy and law reform for, and on behalf of, people of low income, members of historically disadvantaged groups, and students. Staffed by lawyers and law students, the Clinic provides legal advice, and representation at court for a variety of criminal, family and tenant-related matters. It also assists women who have been victims of violence in obtaining compensation. Law students working as caseworkers gain practical legal skills and court/tribunal experience while making a contribution to the Ottawa community.

Director:  Louise Toone

The uOttawa-Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic fills a major gap in Canada’s environmental capacity with a long-needed public interest environmental law organization in the nation’s capital.  It is well-positioned to serve the environmental law and policy interests of both local and national clientele, including environmental, aboriginal and community groups in both official languages. The clinic draws on the University’s strengths in environmental law, and related fields such as economics, science and public health, and on Ecojustice’s strengths in law, policy and science.  Conceived as a problem-based educational model, the Clinic is helping to train the next generation of environmental law and policy leaders, while encouraging students and faculty to become more involved in community service work.

Director:  Josh Ginsberg