Sentencing for two counts of possession of child pornography by a young first offender who had uploaded or made accessible some material and who possessed accessible stills and videos depicting severe abuse of children.
The court held that, despite the objective seriousness of child pornography offences and the dominant role of denunciation and deterrence, a conditional sentence remained legally available where the offence was not statutorily excluded and individualized proportionality supported it.
Relying on the offender's youth, guilty plea, remorse, unusual immigration and pandemic-related isolation, positive antecedents, counselling, and low assessed risk of reoffending, the court concluded that real jail would be disproportionate and injurious to public safety.
A fifteen-month conditional sentence with house arrest, curfew, electronic monitoring, counselling, and community service was imposed.
