Halsbury's Laws of Canada – Mental Health (2023 Reissue) / Military (2023 Reissue) / Mines and Minerals (2023 Reissue)

D'Arcy Hiltz, B.A., LL.B., was admitted to the Ontario Bar (1983) and has been an advocate in the field of consent and capacity matters for over 40 years, acting as counsel to individuals with mental health issues, their families and physicians. For a 10-year period (1991-2001), he was Chair of the Ontario Psychiatric Review Board (Toronto East Region), the Senior Vice Chair of the Consent and Capacity Board for Ontario and the Regional Vice Chair of the Board for Toronto. He presided over thousands of hearings involving consent and capacity matters. Mr. Hiltz has taught at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He has published widely and is a frequent lecturer on consent and capacity, guardianship and estate matters. Mr. Hiltz is a member of the Law Reform Commission of Ontario’s Advisory Group conducting a major review of the laws concerning legal capacity, decision-making and guardianship, and is frequently appointed to act as counsel for individuals whose capacity is in issue under guardianship proceedings. In addition to Halsbury’s Laws of Canada Mental Health, Mr. Hiltz is also a co-author of A Guide to Consent and Capacity Law in Ontario. Mr. Hiltz maintains a law practice in Toronto focusing on mental health law, litigation, guardianship and estate matters.

Anita Szigeti, LL.B., is the founding lawyer of Anita Szigeti Advocates, a Toronto firm focusing on mental health and the law. Ms. Szigeti graduated from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in 1990. She was called to the bar in Ontario in 1992 and in Nunavut in 2014. She is currently co-director (with Dr. Ruby Dhand) of the Mental Health Law course within the Health Law LLM at Osgoode Professional Development, where she obtained a Certificate in Tribunal Adjudication in 2018. Ms. Szigeti has published widely in this area, including as co-author of five textbooks on mental health law across Canada. These include the LexisNexis publications: Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law (2024), Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials (2023), Halsbury’s on Mental Health Law (2023), A Guide to Consent and Capacity Law in Ontario (2024), and A Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice (2020). She is a recognized expert in the area of mental disorder in both civil and criminal law contexts. She has been retained as an expert witness in mental health justice matters.

Ms. Szigeti has been a leader in the field for 30 years at the Ontario bar. She has been representing clients in Nunavut since 2014 as a member of the Nunavut Law Society. Ms. Szigeti was the Chair of the Mental Health Legal Committee (MHLC) for a decade and the founding first Chair of Legal Aid Ontario's Mental Health Law & Policy Advisory Group. For six years, she served as an elected Toronto Director of the Criminal Lawyers' Association (CLA) and the Association's Chair of its Mental Disorder Portfolio. She also served as the CLA’s Women’s Director through COVID in 2020-2021. Ms. Szigeti is the founder and President of the Law And Mental Disorder Association (LAMDA), a national umbrella advocacy organization of 200 lawyers practising mental health law. She is the founder and Secretary of Women in Canadian Criminal Defence (WiCCD), a national advocacy organization for women and gender non-conforming criminal defence lawyers in Canada. Ms. Szigeti’s community involvement extends to membership on the governing body of several other organizations, including as the sole Canadian (now Emeritus) representative on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA), an American advocacy organization based in Colorado, and Pilot Place Society, a not for profit 24/7 supervised housing service provider in Toronto.

Ms. Szigeti’s litigation career spans thousands of tribunal level cases, hundreds of cases argued in appellate Courts including fifteen in the Supreme Court of Canada. Ms. Szigeti has also been involved in more than a dozen death inquiries focusing on police use of force in interactions with persons in crisis and just as many high profile Inquests concerning other mental health related and institutional deaths. In 2016, she joined the prestigious Trial Advocacy faculty at the University of Toronto law school. She is a frequent guest lecturer in many mental health law courses at law schools across the country, including at the University of Toronto, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Western Faculty of Law and Osgoode Hall Law School. Ms. Szigeti is passionate about teaching advocacy as well as the substantive law of mental disorder. She has provided education and training throughout her career to Crowns, Coroners, adjudicators, psychiatrists, defence lawyers, clients, their families and anyone else who asked. She has particular expertise in training tribunal, board and agency adjudicators on how to address mental health matters culturally competently. Ms. Szigeti has mentored hundreds of new lawyers and law students and loves coaching advocacy at trial and appellate levels, including coaching mooting teams at law schools. When she's not mentoring new generations of lawyers and law students, she is in a courtroom litigating, nearly every day. She is grateful for three decades of opportunities to advocate on behalf of vulnerable people, giving a voice to those who otherwise may not be heard at all.

Ruby Dhand, B.A. (Western Ontario), M.A. (Carleton), LL.B. (Ottawa), LL.M. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Osgoode), is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Law at Thompson Rivers University (TRU). She was called to the Bar in Ontario in 2008. Dr. Dhand joined the TRU Faculty of Law in 2012. She was awarded the TRU Law Teaching Excellence Prize by the Student Law Society in 2019, 2021 and 2022 and the Recognition of Excellence Award by the TRU Board of Governors in 2021. Dr. Dhand has been awarded a number of Tri-Agency research grants including the SSHRC Insight Development Grant, the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, the CIHR Fellowship in Health Law and Policy, the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and multiple Law Foundation of BC Grants. Her major areas of research are mental health law, human rights law, health law and policy, disability law, access to justice, the impact of race, culture, ethnicity and other intersectional factors upon the law, clinical legal education and science and law. Dr. Dhand has published extensively in refereed journals including the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, the Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law, the Manitoba Law Journal (Criminal Law Edition) and the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. She is a co-author of the Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law (2024) and Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials (2023). She has also co-authored multiple editions of the Halsbury’s Laws of Canada: Mental Health, and a co-author of the books Law and Mental Health in Canada Cases and Materials (LexisNexis Canada, 2023) and the book Law and Disability in Canada: Cases and Materials (LexisNexis Canada, 2021). Dr. Dhand is currently the Principal Investigator for a number of SSHRC-funded qualitative legal research projects. Her research has been used for law reform initiatives to increase access to justice across Canada.

Dr. Dhand has appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada as part of legal teams led by Anita Szigeti on behalf of the Empowerment Council in British Columbia (AG) v. CCD and Ontario (AG) v. G. Prior to joining the TRU Faculty of Law, Dr. Dhand worked as Anita Szigeti’s first legal intern and at ARCH Disability Law Centre in disability rights law. At TRU, Dr. Dhand led the development and establishment of the TRU Community Legal Clinic, the faculty’s first clinical law program. At TRU Law, Dr. Dhand teaches in the areas of Mental Health Law and Policy in Canada, Human Rights Law, Health Law, Community Lawyering and Clinical Legal Education. She is also currently co-director (with Anita Szigeti) of the Mental Health Law course within the Health Law LLM at Osgoode Professional Development.

Nada Khirdaji, B.A. (Hons.), M.A., LL.B., is a legal researcher and writer for LexisNexis Canada. She co-authored the Halsbury’s Laws of Canada – Military title, and has served as contributing editor for numerous other Halsbury’s titles, including Immigration and Citizenship, Income Tax (International), Mortgages and Motor Vehicles. Prior to joining LexisNexis, Nada was a Partner in the Legal Research Group at Osler. In her 12 years at Osler, she wrote factums, opinions, and research memos and advised in a wide range of practice areas, including statutory interpretation, contracts, insolvency, regulatory compliance, litigation strategy, and administrative matters, among many others, in numerous jurisdictions.

The Judge Advocate General for the Canadian Forces acts as legal adviser to the Governor General, the Minister of National Defence, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces, and superintends the administration of military justice. With legal officers located across Canada, as well as in Europe, the United States and deployed with the Canadian Forces on operational missions throughout the world, the Office of the Judge Advocate General provides independent legal advice and services across the full spectrum of military law, including military justice, military administrative law and operational law.

Barry Barton, B.A., LL.B., LL.M., is a Professor of Law at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, and Director of the Centre for Environmental, Resources and Energy Law. He specializes in energy, natural resources law and climate change law, and has pursued particular research interests in mining, subsurface ownership, carbon capture and storage, critical minerals, the circular economy and geothermal resource development. He has published research and provided expert advice in the public and private sectors in relation to these matters, and is an active member of the Academic Advisory Group of the Section on Energy, Environment, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Law of the International Bar Association. He has taught Mining Law and Finance at Western University in Ontario and the University of Calgary, and he is the author of Canadian Law of Mining, the leading text on mining law.

Catherine Morin, B.Mus. (Hons.), LL.B., is the Supervising Editor, Supplementation for Halsbury's Laws of Canada. She is responsible for the creation of supplements for all Halsbury's titles, and also oversees the semiannual updating of Halsbury's Companion: Guide and Consolidated Index and the updating of glossaries for Halsbury’s titles. A former practitioner, Catherine has been responsible for restructuring and overseeing the production of various digest products, including NetLetters™ and the Canadian Weekly Law Sheet. She has extensive legal research and writing experience, and has authored several Halsbury's Laws of Canada titles, including Gifts, Holidays, Hospitality, Missing Persons and Absentees and Roads, Highways and Bridges. She is the co-author of the Halsbury's Debtor and Creditor and Halsbury's Mines and Minerals titles, and has served as a contributing editor on numerous others.