Marie-Ève Landry

The appeal concerned a constitutional challenge to the six-month mandatory minimum sentence for obtaining, or communicating for the purpose of obtaining, sexual services from a person under 18 for consideration.

The majority held that although the reasonably foreseeable youthful-offender hypothetical warranted a fit sentence of five months’ incarceration, the additional month required by the mandatory minimum did not meet the demanding standard of gross disproportionality under s. 12 of the Charter.

The Court emphasized the grave and inherently exploitative nature of child sexual commodification, the priority of denunciation and deterrence in sentencing such offences, and the need to exclude irrelevant sympathetic details from hypothetical scenarios.

The declaration of invalidity issued by the Court of Appeal was therefore set aside.

The Crown appealed a Quebec Court of Appeal decision that quashed four convictions and entered a stay of proceedings based on a violation of the right to be tried within a reasonable time under s. 11(b) of the Charter.

The trial judge had found a s. 11(b) infringement but declined to stay proceedings on the basis that the accused had not been prejudiced by the delay.

The Court of Appeal erred by entering a stay without re-examining the reasonableness of the delays, even though the record contained a detailed statement of admissions.

The Supreme Court held that a functional analysis of the trial judge's reasons showed he considered the relevant Morin factors and reached the correct conclusion.

The defence-caused delays, including multiple unsuccessful applications and insistence on conflicted counsel, must be subtracted, and the transitional exceptional circumstance under Jordan further supported the conclusion that s. 11(b) was not infringed.