3 total
Application to terminate lifetime SOIRA obligations dismissed due to serious nature of child sexual abuse and ongoing risk.
The applicant, who was convicted in 1998 of multiple sexual offences against his adopted daughter, applied to terminate his lifetime Sex Offender Information Registration Act (SOIRA) reporting obligations.
The court considered the serious nature of the interfamilial child sexual abuse and the applicant's ongoing cognitively distorted thinking that shifted blame to the victim.
Finding no objective evidence of a low risk to reoffend, the court concluded that the ongoing registration requirement was not grossly disproportionate to the public interest.
The application was dismissed.
The court refused to qualify a proposed expert on Aboriginal history due to a lack of independence and reliance on unverified information from an interested party.
The defendants sought to qualify Dr. Sidney Harring as an expert on the existence and territory of the Amikwa Nation to support their Section 35(1) aboriginal rights claim.
The Crown opposed.
The court applied the two-stage test for expert evidence admissibility from White Burgess and R. v. Abbey (Abbey #2).
The court found Dr. Harring's evidence failed the threshold requirement for proper qualification due to lack of impartiality, independence, and bias, stemming from his reliance on secondary sources, unverified information from an interested party (Stacey McQuabbie), and contradictions with source documents.
The court also found the evidence would be excluded at the gatekeeper stage due to unreliability.
Consequently, Dr. Harring was not qualified as an expert.
The court dismissed the application, finding the Society failed to prove risk of harm.
The Children's Aid Society sought a finding that a newborn child was in need of protection under Section 74 of the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, alleging risks based on parental substance use, the father's youth justice involvement and anger management concerns, lack of engagement with the Society during pregnancy planning, and inadequate preparedness for the child's discharge from hospital.
The court rejected all grounds for the protection finding, determining that the Society failed to establish a real and likely risk of physical or emotional harm on a balance of probabilities.
The court found the parents' plan to reside with extended family support was reasonable and responsible, and that the Society's concerns were largely speculative or based on incomplete and misleading information presented in the apprehension warrant application.
