Marc Ribeiro

The Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the order for a new Tax Court hearing before a different judge after multiple violations of official language rights of witnesses and counsel, and the related interpretation right of the unilingual party.

In a constitutional challenge to federal tax requirement powers, legal professional secrecy was weighed against the state’s audit and collection objectives.

The court held that compelling production from legal advisers without adequate notice to clients, without judicially supervised safeguards, and with an overbroad accounting-records exception produced unreasonable seizures under s. 8.

The impugned provisions failed minimal impairment and were not justified under s. 1.

The provisions were read down to exclude notaries and lawyers acting as legal advisers, and the accounting-records exception was declared invalid.

The Supreme Court of Canada allowed the appeal and reinstated the Minister of Justice’s surrender order in an extradition matter.

The Court held the Minister’s decision was reasonable, that a possible fourth trial in New Hampshire did not meet the threshold of shocking the conscience or being unjust or oppressive under s. 44(1) of the Extradition Act, and that comity and international cooperation strongly favored surrender.

The appeal concerned judicial review of a surrender order under extradition legislation in relation to historic U.S. murder charges revived after modern DNA testing.

The appellant argued delay, evidentiary weakness, and prejudice rendered surrender contrary to fundamental justice and unjust or oppressive.

The Court held the Minister reasonably concluded those concerns should generally be addressed by the foreign trial court, consistent with comity and established extradition principles.

The Court found no reviewable error in the assessment of section 7 Charter concerns or section 44(1) of the Extradition Act.

The surrender order was upheld and the appeal dismissed.