On April 8, 1970, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau informed the members of the Canadian House of Commons that the federal government had given notice of its intention to introduce two bills dealing with the protection of Canada’s marine environment and the living resources of the sea. He then made the following statement:

I wish now to table a copy of a letter which Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations has delivered to the Secretary General submitting a new reservation to Canada’s acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. This reservation is intended to guard against any possible litigation of certain features of these two bills.

Lors de sa dernière réunion, qui cut lieu en septembre 1970, le Comité des utilisations pacifiques de l’espace extra-atmosphérique a noté que “le Groupe de travail (des satellites de radiodiffusion directe) avait estimé qu’au moins dans un avenir prévisible, la coopération internationale dans ce domaine devrait s’exercer à un niveau régional, trouvant son expression dans la participation à la creation et à l’exploitation de systèmes régionaux de radiodiffusion par satellites et/ou à la préparation et à la production de programmes pour ces systèmes et que les Etats membres et les organisations régionales et internationales devraient en conséquence favoriser la coopération régionale, tant au niveau gouvernemental que non gouvernemental, en particulier parmi les organismes de radiodiffusion et leurs associations.”

Recent Allegations Concerning a “massacre” of Vietnamese by United States forces in the Song My area of Vietnam, together with disclosures of a similar event during British antiguerrilla operations in Malaya, have drawn renewed attention to the problem of the behaviour of troops in war, and the extent to which they may be expected to obey the laws of war. This is not the place to examine the philosophical aspect of whether there are or can be any rules of war, particularly if one of the belligerents is waging an “illegal” or “criminal” war, or is not recognized as a state so that the operations do not technically qualify as a war in the traditional sense. The Kawasaki case demonstrates that “war” may exist, even though neither the parties nor third states recognize the operations as such. It is also clear, at least since the Geneva Conventions of 1949, that laws regarding the humane treatment of wounded and sick, prisoners of war and civilians in occupied territory operate even in armed conflicts not of an international character, as well as those which only one party regards as a war, or if only one is party to the Conventions, or if territory is occupied and no resistance met.

Two Phenomena Have Converged in recent years to account for the current interest among international lawyers in the concept of the “consensus” of states. The first is the recognition in jurisprudence that all law, and particularly the international legal system with its lack of centrally organized sanctions, is founded on inductively verifiable psychology and not in deductive principles purportedly derived from God, nature, or reason. If international law is nothing more or less than what states (national decisionmakers and their counsel) think it is, then do not particular rules of international law owe their existence and transmutations to the flow of international consensus?

For our present purpose it is useful to divide the Commonwealth countries into two categories according to the circumstances under which they achieved international recognition as subjects of international law: first, the older Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Irish Free State and South Africa which acquired international identity through a gradual process of constitutional transition from Crown colony systems to responsible governments; and, second, the colonial territories that have become independent states since 1945.

Avec le recul du temps, douze ans à peine, nous pouvons maintenant apprécier les conséquences de l'insuccès des deux conférences des Nations Unies sur le droit de la mer, tenues à Genève en 1958 et 1960, dans leur tentative de fixer de manière uniforme l'étendue des eaux territoriales des Etats. A défaut de solution multilatérale qui eût consacré l'une ou l'autre des principales thèses en présence à l'époque — la mer territoriale de trois milles marins ou celle de douze milles — les Etats ont à tour de rôle décidé de résoudre par le moyen d'actes unilatéraux les problèmes de plus en plus aigus soulevés par la protection des eaux contigües à leurs côtes et la conservation des richesses naturelles qui s'y trouvent.

In recent years there has been increasing discussion in both academic and official circles of the problems of non-tariff barriers to trade, particularly restrictive business practices, the conduct of the multinational firm, and the implications of foreign ownership of enterprises. These matters are of concern not only for world markets but for individual nations. In Canada, the reports of several important public inquiries (the Report of the Task Force on the Structure of Canadian Industry, the Interim Report of the Economic Council of Canada on Competition Policy, and the Report of the Royal Commission on Farm Machinery), have been published already. And the Canadian government is now engaged in a major study of foreign ownership of Canadian business; the Standing Committee of the House of Commons on External Affairs has just completed its report on this issue, which includes reference to the extraterritorial application of anti-trust laws. The International Conference on Monopolies, Mergers and Restrictive Practices held at Cambridge in September 1969, in which Canadians participated, discussed important aspects of the multinational firm and the extraterritorial application of anti-trust laws, a subject that has engaged the urgent attention of the International Law Association since 1962. Moreover, the O.E.C.D. has latterly become concerned with the importance of these matters, particularly with their impact on international trade.

At its seventeenth session held in February-March 1970, the Legal Committee of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) adopted the final text of new draft rules governing the liability of the air carrier in respect of the international carriage of passengers by air. Since 1965, ICAO has been working on the preparation of these draft rules which, when ultimately adopted by a diplomatic conference, signed and ratified, will constitute a farreaching revision of the provisions of the widely accepted Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to International Carriage by Air (Warsaw 1929) as amended by the Hague Protocol of 1955. In previous notes in this Yearbook the writer summarized discussions on the Warsaw rules in the international aviation community from late 1965, when the United States of America filed its notification of denunciation of the Warsaw Convention, until early 1968, when the ICAO Council decided to hand over the task of revision to the ICAO Legal Committee. The latter body having finished its work on revision early in March 1970, the ICAO Council lost no time in convening a diplomatic conference for February-March 1971. This conference will have the task of preparing and adopting the definitive instrument revising the Warsaw Convention as amended by the Hague Protocol.

Commenting on canada’s participation in the activities of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Cambodia, Mr. Paul Martin, the then Secretary of State for External Affairs, stated in the House of Commons on May 27, 1965 as follows:

… Canada has been a member of the Commission for almost 11 years under two different Governments. I believe our record on the Commission is one that has commended itself to the people of Asia, and has commended itself to most people in Canada who have looked at this problem objectively. As Secretary of State for External Affairs I say, and I say with pride, that the officers of the Department and the officers of the Department of National Defence who have served on these commissions have rendered to Canada and as well as to the cause of peace, a distinct service.

The vancouver lawyer and financier, A. G. Duncan Crux was arrested in the Bahamas on June 3, 1969, on a provisional warrant issued by the chief magistrate in Nassau, before whom five informations, containing a total of twenty-one charges against Crux, were laid by the government of Canada. Canada sought to have him returned to Canada for trial. The charges were heard before a stipendiary and circuit magistrate and, on December 5, Crux was committed to await return to Canada.

Man’s success in devising ways and means of limiting and controlling violence in all areas of human relations, domestic, national and international, may well determine his ability to survive upon this planet. This involves the creation of procedures and institutions that will assist in settling disputes and in providing protection for individuals and property. These procedures too must envisage the necessity of development and change, and give hope and encouragement to those who are the “have nots” of this world. It is natural that as a general rule those who are older and have achieved some degree of security and prosperity should wish to retain these. It is equally natural that the young and those without prosperity or security, or those who live in unhappy and unsatisfactory circumstances, should want and work for changes that they believe will bring them what they want and feel they deserve.