Mercedes Perez successfully represented a patient detained at the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in a hospital transfer appeal. The patient had been civilly detained at Waypoint’s maximum secure unit pursuant to provisions in Ontario’s Mental Health Act. He applied to the Consent and Capacity Board for a transfer to the North Bay Regional […]

Read More…


In an application filed with the Human Rights Tribunal on International Women’s Day, Alex Petit-Thorne sheds light on how CUPE deals with sexual harassment internally. Kelley Bryan is representing Ms. Petit-Thorne in the claim. Ms. Petit-Thorne, a union member, made a sexual harassment complaint in November 2018 against Devin Lefebvre, CUPE Local 3903’s chairperson. Her […]

Read More…


Mercedes Perez, appointed by the Superior Court of Justice as amicus curiae, successfully raised procedural fairness issues in an appeal from a treatment incapacity decision of the Consent and Capacity Board. The decision has been published in the March 15, 2019 edition of the Ontario Reports. The appellant suffered from schizaffective disorder and had been […]

Read More…


In Rae v. Collins, the Ontario Court of Justice considered the rarely invoked detention powers in Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act (“HPPA”) in the context of a man infected with tuberculosis. In this unreported case, Mercedes Perez successfully argued that the quarantine detention powers should be subject to a minimally intrusive standard; that is, […]

Read More…


Mercedes Perez and co-counsel Karen Steward (Advocacy Centre for the Elderly) represented the intervenor Mental Health Legal Committee (MHLC) at the Supreme Court of Canada today in Ewert v. Canada. The case involved a Charter challenge to the Correctional Service of Canada’s use of psychiatric actuarial risk assessment tools, such as the Violence Risk Appraisal […]

Read More…


In a statement of claim filed in July 2017, Philip Alafe has sued the Brantford police over his treatment while he was held overnight in a police cell in July 2015.   Kelley Bryan and Alex Procope are representing Mr. Alafe in the claim. In April 2017, Justice Lenz of the Ontario Court of Justice stayed Mr. Alafe’s charges […]

Read More…


An Ontario judge has found that psychiatric patients at the Oak Ridge division of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre (today the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care) endured gross violations of their human dignity and human rights and were tortured both mentally and physically while detained. The case was a multi-plaintiff proceeding commenced in 2000 […]

Read More…