$5,000 grant awarded to law professor

The aim of Jonnette's project, titled "Resolving Disability-Based Human Rights Claims in Residential Tenancy Disputes," is to use case law from British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and Northwest Territories to research and write about the resolution of disability claims in residential tenancy disputes and the scope and nature of the landlord’s duty to accommodate disability. A broader goal of this project is to provide a basis for future empirical investigation, particularly in those jurisdictions such as Alberta that do not make their residential tenancy decisions publicly available. It is also hoped that the results of this project will contribute to the access to justice literature by identifying structural barriers that obstruct access to justice for the vulnerable population of renters with disabilities.

The Foundation for Legal Research provides funds for legal research falling into three broad categories, namely:

• Research and writing where the emphasis is on the statement of existing rules of law, sometimes referred to as doctrinal research;
• Research with regard to the working of the legal system; and
• Research with regard to developments in fields peripheral to legal doctrine, such as criminology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and economics and their relationship to rules of law.

The goal of the Foundation is to encourage legal writing that will be valuable to Canadian lawyers, notaries and judges in their day-to-day work in the law and to the administration of justice.