The defendant, AIPL Canada Holdings Inc., brought a pre-trial application to stay proceedings for unreasonable delay under section 11(b) of the Charter, concerning charges under the Building Code Act.
The total delay from the earliest information sworn to the anticipated end of trial was 39 months and 16 days, exceeding the 18-month presumptive ceiling established in R. v. Jordan.
The Crown argued that significant portions of this delay were implicitly waived by the defence through their agreement to adjournments for resolution discussions.
The Court found that the periods where the defence agreed to adjournments for resolution discussions constituted implicit waiver, even without explicit waiver or objection to delay on the record.
Subtracting this implicitly waived delay resulted in a net delay of 263 days, which is below the 18-month ceiling.
The Court dismissed the defendant's application, finding that the defence had not discharged its onus to prove the delay was unreasonable.
