G.W. Tranmer

The Crown applied to have the respondent designated as a dangerous offender and sentenced to an indeterminate period of incarceration following his convictions for sexual assault, fraudulent personation, and multiple breaches of a long-term supervision order.

The respondent conceded that he met the criteria for a dangerous offender designation but argued for a determinate sentence followed by a long-term supervision order, relying on his recently discovered Aboriginal heritage and the availability of culturally sensitive programming.

The court found that the respondent's Aboriginal heritage did not impact his moral blameworthiness and that there was no reasonable expectation that a lesser measure would adequately protect the public given his high risk to reoffend, his history of deception, and his poor response to past treatment.

The respondent was designated a dangerous offender and sentenced to an indeterminate period of incarceration.

The accused, subject to a Long Term Supervision Order (LTSO), was arrested on a suspension warrant after being found at an unauthorized location with an unauthorized female.

Upon arrest, a concealed, unauthorized cell phone was found on his person.

Parole officers conducted a cursory search of the phone to check for LTSO compliance.

Later, a parole officer interviewed the accused without informing him that he was also under police investigation for sexual assault and personation.

The accused brought a Charter application to exclude his statements and the cell phone evidence.

The court held that the failure to inform the accused of the new criminal jeopardy before the interview violated his s. 10 rights, and excluded those statements under s. 24(2).

However, the court found no s. 8 violation regarding the cell phone search, as the accused had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the unauthorized phone and the parole officers' search was lawful for compliance purposes.

The applicant, a federal inmate, sought habeas corpus challenging an emergency involuntary transfer from a minimum‑security institution to a medium‑security institution.

The court held that correctional authorities failed to disclose key information relied upon in the reclassification decision, including communications with police and details underlying the security reclassification scale.

The court also found a reasonable apprehension of bias arising from the conduct of the parole officer and the warden in seeking prejudicial information to support the transfer decision while withholding it from the inmate.

Applying the Supreme Court’s framework in Mission Institution v. Khela, the court concluded that the transfer decision was unreasonable and therefore unlawful.

The transfer decision was quashed and the inmate was ordered returned to minimum security.