2 total
Mandatory minimum upheld; six months was not grossly disproportionate.
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.
Child luring mandatory minimum sentences struck down as cruel and unusual punishment.
The Crown appealed the fitness of the sentence imposed on the first respondent for child luring under s. 172.1(1)(b) of the Criminal Code, and both respondents challenged the constitutionality of the mandatory minimum sentences in s. 172.1(2)(a) and (b) as cruel and unusual punishment under s. 12 of the Charter.
The majority held that the sentencing judge committed errors in principle in imposing a five-month concurrent sentence for luring, and increased the sentence to 12 months' imprisonment to be served consecutively.
The mandatory minimum sentences of one year (indictable) and six months (summary) for child luring were found to be grossly disproportionate when applied to reasonably foreseeable offenders and declared of no force or effect under s. 52 of the Constitution Act, 1982.
The dissent would have upheld the mandatory minimums as constitutional.
