Updated Sponsorship Information in Legal Help for British Columbians

legal help

A few months ago YWCA Legal Educator Andrea Vollans wrote to Clicklaw and asked if someone could write a factsheet clarifying the rule for conditional permanent residence when a child is born after an application for permanent residence. The information was not available in any of the resources she had checked.

We contacted the Legal Help for British Columbians Clicklaw Wikibook legal reviewer Rochelle Appleby, who was able to update the page “My husband sponsored me and we have now separated” to include Andrea’s suggestion, and also add some information about a claim of abuse or neglect. This update is an example of how Clicklaw Wikibooks can respond quickly to a user request in addition to our regular updates concerning legislative changes.

Newcomers and the Law

pls-new-wikibooks-april-2014For newcomers to Canada, there are some new and updated resources that explain every day legal issues from the People’s Law School:

  • Learning about the Law Wikibook covers the fundamentals of how the law affects your family, young people, seniors, employment, and housing.
  • Driving in BC explains the basics of driving and the law. It includes legal information for people learning to drive.
  • Paying Taxes explains to newcomers and new taxpayers what taxes we’re expected to pay, who we pay taxes to, and how to pay them.
  • Workplace Bullying and Harassment explains what workers, employers, and supervisors need to know and do about workplace bullying and harassment, and where you can get help or more information.

All of these titles are now available as part of the expanding collection on Clicklaw Wikibooks. Clicklaw Wikibooks are collaboratively developed, plain language legal publications that are born-wiki. They are easy to read on your screen, fully searchable, and hyperlinked to key resources. One of the benefits to the Clicklaw Wikibooks platform is that it offers you a choice of format. You can:

  • read the information online on the Clicklaw Wikibooks site,
  • download and print the publication as a PDF,
  • download the publication as an EPUB — a popular ebook standard — and read on an ereader, tablet or mobile device, or
  • for a fee, order your own print on demand copy of the publication.

A free print compilation of these and other People’s Law School wikibooks will be distributed to ESL learning centres and public libraries in BC, under the title Learning about the Law: Extended Edition. This project was made possible with funding support from the Province of BC and Government of Canada.