This accessible and practical reference provides an overview of the essential features of the law governing business organizations in Canada, both in theory and practice. It is a comprehensive and up-to-date guide for practitioners and business people setting up and using sole proprietorships, partnerships and corporations to carry on small businesses as well as a thorough introduction to the law and policy of public company governance.
The fourth edition has been fully updated to reflect developments in the caselaw and statutory reforms in the last decade. Dozens of new cases are cited. The 2018 amendments to the Canada Business Corporations Act are discussed, including the requirements for public corporations to report on the diversity of their boards of directors that are not yet in force. The chapters on securities law, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility have been significantly expanded. As well, features to improve the utility of the book have been added, such as more comprehensive cross-referencing throughout the text.

J. Anthony VanDuzer, BA, LLB, LLM, is a full professor and former vice dean at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, of the University of Ottawa. He holds the Hyman Soloway Chair of Business and Trade Law at the law school and is an adjunct research professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. At the University of Ottawa, he teaches contracts and upper-year courses on domestic and international business law, and has received several teaching awards. He has also taught in the University of Ottawa’s Executive MBA program, at Queen’s University’s International Studies Centre, and at the faculties of law at the University of Muenster in Germany and the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Prior to his academic career, Professor VanDuzer worked as a corporate lawyer at Fasken. As a consultant, Professor VanDuzer has advised Industry Canada, the Competition Bureau, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Law Society of Ontario, the NAFTA Secretariat, and the Commonwealth Secretariat. He was a member of the Academic Advisory Council to the deputy minister for international trade from 2002 to 2006, and has participated in technical assistance projects involving transition and developing economies, including Armenia, Bangladesh, China, El Salvador, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine, Vietnam, and the countries of the Caribbean Community. He has acted as an outside legal assessor for the Central and Eastern European Law Initiative of the American Bar Association in its reviews of a foreign trade law for Bosnia-Herzegovina and a Competition Protection Act for Bulgaria. Professor VanDuzer also advised on the development of a new foreign trade law for Russia that was passed by the Duma in 2005. Professor VanDuzer’s main research interests are business, trade, and investment law.

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"The second edition of VanDuzer's book should be required reading at every Canadian law school. It continues to bring a level of clarity and accessibility to the subject matter that is missing in other texts."

Derek Smith, Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP from the McGill Law Journal, Vol. 49, 2004