Over the last few months, the journal’s editorial team has been looking at a project that we are pleased to present to you today. It is a column entitled “Labour and Employment Policies” that, as its name indicates, will be devoted to labour law and, more broadly, to public policy.

Long-time readers will notice that this column is not really new. Indeed, for many years, a section in RI/IR made it possible to publish, from time to time, texts from specialists, jurists and non-jurists, on laws, important judgments, and lines of jurisprudence. However, this section was published on an irregular basis, appearing according to the texts received and carrying different titles (Labour Law, Information, Discussion, or Comments). In recent years, it appeared sporadically, finally disappearing from the pages of the journal after 2012. Yet, the texts that were published, some of them landmark, were at the heart of RI/IR’s mission and our field of study: to advance industrial relations knowledge in Canada and elsewhere while, at the same time, assuring the link between academia and practice.

To re-establish this tradition, we are launching this new section, which will be published regularly in editions 1 and 3 of each volume. Responsibility for this section will be assumed by a committee composed of the undersigned, as well as Sara Slinn (York University) and Guylaine Vallée (University of Montreal), both of whom are members of the journal’s Editorial Board. The texts that will appear in this section will be shorter (around 4000 words) than the regular articles that we publish, in order to facilitate their rapid publication and to be as close as possible to the developments with which they are dealing.

For this first publication, we are pleased to present two high-quality texts on recent Supreme Court of Canada judgments. In her commentary, Guylaine Vallée puts forward an analysis of the question of the “right to disconnect” and the rights of management as they arise in the case Association of Justice Counsel v Canada (Attorney General). In his text, Eric Tucker analyzes the contribution of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation v British Columbia decision to case law spanning the last decade as it relates to the constitutional protection afforded to collective bargaining in Canada.

We are already working to prepare the next publication of this column and invite those who are interested in submitting a text proposal to do so (at relat.ind@rlt.ulaval.ca) or, if more information is required, to contact the responsible of this column. Author’s instructions for this new section will be available soon on the journal’s website (http://www.riir.ulaval.ca).