Michael Bennett

The accused brought a Charter motion seeking a stay for unreasonable delay under s. 11(b).

Applying Jordan, the court held that delay arising from a defence adjournment to contest additional committal submissions under s. 548 of the Criminal Code was defence delay because the position lacked arguable merit, and that delay caused by the accuseds' non-attendance at the preliminary inquiry was also defence delay.

After deducting that time, the net delay fell below the 30-month ceiling.

In the alternative, the court held that the matter also complied with Morin as a transitional case.

Both applications were dismissed.

The applicants sought a determination of whether a lessee of a leased vehicle could access the lessor’s insurance coverage beyond the statutory $1 million cap under s. 267.12 of the Insurance Act following a motor vehicle accident.

They argued that a legislative gap existed between the 2006 amendments to the Insurance Act limiting lessor liability and the later approval of the OEF 110 endorsement restricting coverage for lessees, allowing lessees to access the lessor’s insurance as unnamed insureds during the interim.

The court rejected this argument, holding that s. 267.12 must be interpreted in light of the legislative purpose of protecting lessors and their insurers by capping exposure.

Interpreting the statute to permit lessees to access excess or umbrella policies would undermine the legislative scheme.

The court further held that the excess and umbrella policies at issue did not provide coverage to the lessee based on their wording and the fact that the lessor was not a named insured under the relevant policies.

The application was dismissed.

The Crown appealed the dismissal of a dangerous offender application against the respondent, who pleaded guilty to numerous sexual offences against children and child pornography charges.

The trial judge had dismissed the application, holding that the predicate offences were not sufficiently serious to meet the threshold for a dangerous or long-term offender designation.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred in law by imposing a seriousness threshold on the circumstances of the predicate offences.

Applying the correct legal framework to the trial judge's factual findings, the Court of Appeal designated the respondent a long-term offender and varied his sentence to time served followed by eight years of community supervision.