We were pleased to see the recent launch of the Commercial Mediation Group covered by the Editor’s blogpost last month. So why set up the Group, what are we doing and where is this headed? As for the thinking behind the initiative, the Editor hit the nail on the head. For many years the ‘mediation…

These days, I don’t go to that many mediation conferences. I haven’t lost my interest or passion for mediation, I just find that the conferences are all full of mediators talking to mediators. And while some of my best friends are mediators, I don’t need a conference to talk to them. The harsh truth is…

Mediation doesn’t require special premises. It can be conducted in any type of place. There are Native Title mediations for Indigenous Australians that can happen at least in part on the land in question, under a tree or on a hill side. Mediations in the workplace often happen in the place where the dispute originally…

Picking up where I left off last post, I want to discuss what I consider to be a major problem with the Ontario Commercial Mediation Act, 2010 (OCMA) relating to the admissibility of evidence of what occurred during a mediation. Generally (with some exceptions) at Common Law anything said or done in mediation is inadmissible…

1. Unlike the arbitral process where courts strive to distinguish between the concepts of a private process and a confidential process, the mediation process is indisputably and inherently confidential. But what happens if one party breaches this confidentiality during the mediation? In formal terms, can the act by one party in breach be treated as…

One of the things I value most highly about my mediation practice is the trust that is put in me by the people with whom I work. The parties to a mediation will tell me about their hopes, wishes and fears within a conflict, and will trust me to keep these to myself. It is…