Criminal
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March 19, 2025
Case illustrates why sentencing can include consideration of future harm
Should our criminal law be proactive in preventing future wrongdoing, or should it simply apply to wrongs that have been proven to have been committed? The Ontario Court of Justice was implicitly presented with this question.
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March 18, 2025
Challenge of prosecutorial discretion must meet high standard of showing abuse of process: Court
Ontario’s top court has brought some clarity to the question of who may seek review of the Crown’s exercise of prosecutorial discretion in the context of a private prosecution.
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March 18, 2025
Distinction between factual, legal causation at heart of Mennonite-buggy-car crash appeal
Dayton Kelly was 19 years old on Oct. 24, 2021, when the Honda Civic he was driving collided with a horse-drawn buggy, killing its driver, Daniel Martin, 76, and his wife Ester, 79. They were described in court as Mennonites. It was dark when the accident occurred; the buggy was without lights and there were no streetlights at about 8:46 p.m. The Civic slammed into the passenger side of the buggy as Martin was crossing Highway 86. Martin died at the scene and his wife died two weeks later.
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March 17, 2025
Federal Court of Appeal decision keeps class action alive involving Indigenous women inmates
Indigenous female inmates in Canada’s federal prison system have gained a partial legal victory in their quest to certify a class action against the government over discrimination by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC).
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March 17, 2025
Are we seriously tackling anti-Black racism? | Hodine Williams
Canada loves to tell the world — and itself — that it’s a model of diversity and inclusion. We point to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our multicultural policies, and our reputation as a welcoming nation. We feign and dance around the issue so often as if pretending it doesn’t exist will somehow make it magically disappear.
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March 17, 2025
Life as a prisoner | David Dorson
I wrote a few months ago about some of the differences between minimum security and higher security levels. Minimum is definitely an easier place to be, where, unlike medium or maximum, you can actually have a kind of life.
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March 17, 2025
APPEALS - Grounds - Misapprehension of or failure to consider evidence
Appeal by Crown from decision acquitting Kelly of charges of causing death while driving with excess blood-drug concentration (BDC) and dangerous driving causing death.
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March 14, 2025
SCC extends Charter-guaranteed presumption of innocence to inmate discipline proceedings
Overruling its own 35-year-old precedent while expanding the Charter’s protections for the presumption of innocence into new legal territory, the Supreme Court of Canada split 6-3 to strike down a Saskatchewan regulation that authorized inmate segregation or loss of earned remission to be imposed on those found to have committed a prison disciplinary offence, based only on proof on a “balance of probabilities” standard rather than on the heightened standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
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March 14, 2025
Carney Sworn as PM, unveils leaner cabinet including Gary Anandasangaree as Justice Minister
Liberal leader Mark Carney has been sworn in as Prime Minister and unveiled a streamlined 24-member cabinet, which includes many of the ministers on the “front line” of the ongoing trade war with the United States.
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March 14, 2025
CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES - Life, liberty and security of person -- Presumption of innocence
Appeal by Appellant from judgment of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal which affirmed a decision concluding that s. 68 of The Correctional Services Regulations, 2013 (Regulations) did not violate s. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter).