``This is a test of whether our legal system has moved with the times to address the needs of a multicultural community,'' Avvy Go, director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, told a news conference yesterday.

The gathering was called to announce the formation of the ``Huang Family's Cooking Rights Support Group.'' The group plans to offer moral and financial support to the Chinese family involved in the dispute.

The controversy centres on Tung Chu Huang, 45, and her husband Tzu Chu Huang, 49, who live at 119 Palmerston Ave. The Huangs are being sued by Elizabeth Ann Magner, who lives at 121 Palmerston.

July 12, 1999

The law says any child born in Canada has an automatic right to claim Canadian citizenship. It also says Canada has the right to deport illegal immigrants.

Every year, immigration officers are faced with hundreds of cases in which the two laws conflict. Women who are in Canada illegally bear children. Does that give them the right to remain?

The case in question involved Mavis Baker, a Jamaican-born woman who came to Canada in 1981 as a visitor, got a job as a domestic and gave birth to four children without becoming a legal immigrant. In 1992, after her youngest child was born, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and applied for welfare. This alerted the immigration department to the fact that she had overstayed her visitor's visa. She was ordered deported.

July 7, 1999

QUEBEC CITY - Quebec's 47,500 nurses have voted massively to continue their illegal strike. But their union leaders say they are willing to step up attempts to end the dispute. After announcing the nurses voted 93 per cent in favour of continuing to defy a back-to-work law, union leader Jennie Skene promised to telephone Premier Lucien Bouchard to talk about ways of resuming talks.

Skene, president of the nurses' federation, also announced the union's 600 top delegates will meet Friday to explore other avenues to break the negotiating impasse with the Parti Qu�b�cois government. And she welcomed a suggestion by Quebec Liberal Leader Jean Charest that a special conciliator be appointed with a 48-hour mandate to find a way of getting the government and nurses back to the bargaining table.

The nurses have enjoyed strong public support and have been joined in theirmarches by other public-sector employees such as doctors, pharmacists and ambulance workers.