Joshua Tong

The accused, an insurance agent, was charged with fraud for knowingly issuing a fake auto insurance certificate to a customer and keeping the cash premium.

The court found the accused guilty, noting he issued a six-month binder policy without insurer authorization, failed to issue a proper receipt, and admitted to police that he issued the certificate.

The accused also brought an application under section 11(b) of the Charter alleging unreasonable delay.

The court dismissed the application, finding the total delay of nearly 18 months was reasonable given inherent time requirements and unforeseen scheduling issues.

The appellant challenged his impaired driving conviction on a summary conviction appeal, arguing that the trial judge erred in dismissing a Charter s. 10(b) application based on alleged language barriers that prevented meaningful understanding of the right to counsel.

The court held that the existence of special circumstances was a question of mixed fact and law, and found no palpable and overriding error in the trial judge’s findings that the appellant’s English was sufficient.

The court further held that even if a s. 10(b) breach had been established and the breath certificates excluded under s. 24(2), the conviction for impaired driving would still stand on the pre-detention observational evidence.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant appealed his convictions for sexual assault and his indeterminate sentence as a dangerous offender.

He argued the trial judge erred by refusing to edit his criminal record to remove prior sexual assault convictions and by excluding collateral fact evidence about the complainant.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding no error in the Corbett ruling and no substantial wrong from the evidentiary exclusion given the overwhelming forensic evidence.

The sentence appeal was also dismissed, as the dangerous offender proceeding was conducted fairly.

Thirty‑three accused sought exclusion of wiretap evidence arising from “Project Marvel,” a large police investigation into shootings, robbery, and organized gang activity in Toronto.

The applicants argued the authorizations violated s. 8 of the Charter because the police failed to establish “investigative necessity” under s. 186(1)(b) of the Criminal Code and improperly named certain individuals as “known persons” under s. 185(1)(e).

The court applied the deferential Garofoli review standard and held the authorizing judge had a reasonable basis to conclude investigative necessity existed despite alternative investigative techniques such as cell‑phone analysis.

The court further held that the challenged individuals were properly named as targets because interception of their communications could assist the investigation and the statutory threshold is low.

A separate sub‑facial challenge relating to the search of a backyard shed and the curtilage doctrine was also rejected.