The Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, as it was then known, began their first session on February 17, 1966, under the Chair Alan John Patrick Cameron (Liberal Party of Canada).
[1] More recently, in December 2018, under its current name, JUST, the Committee submitted their unanimous report to the House of Commons entitled Moving Forward in the Fight Against Human Trafficking in Canada.
The current name was put in place by the House of Commons effective "September 30, 1997" as it combine its mandate with the "former Standing Committee on Human Rights and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.
[6] The first session of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs on February 17, 1966, until April 21, 1966, under the Chair Alan John Patrick Cameron (Liberal Party of Canada)[1] from constituency High Park, ON.
[12] In his submission to the JUST committee, the President of the Canadian National Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Errol Mendes, who is also a constitutional and international law professor at the University of Ottawa, recommended that an "authoritative set of guidelines for the roles of the attorney general, the cabinet and the Privy Council Office relating to attorney general and the [Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)] conduct and decisions on prosecutions" be established.
[13] On February 27, former Attorney General of Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, provided lengthy testimony and answered questions about the possibility of political interference in the SNL-Lavalin prosecution.
[4] On June 8, 2017, meeting, JUST unanimously agreed to conduct a study of human trafficking in Canada and present a report of its findings to the House of Commons.
The study takes place as part of "worldwide discussions on how to better mitigate the incitement of hatred through online platforms" given that "nearly all Canadians under the age of 45 use the internet everyday."
[22][23][24] In May 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participated in meetings in Paris in which representatives from social media companies met with government leaders to "discuss solutions to the growing problem of violent extremist content online".
[25] In mid-April Conservative MPs invited Jordan Peterson, a tenured professor at the University of Toronto, to appear before the committee as a witness.