Melissa Insanic

The decision concerns a bail application by Gurpreet Singh, who is sought for extradition to the United States on charges related to large-scale cocaine trafficking.

Singh proposed a strict house arrest bail plan with GPS monitoring and multiple sureties.

The court found the plan had strengths but ultimately denied bail due to a high risk of flight, citing Singh’s international connections, travel history, and lack of credible financial disclosure.

The application was dismissed.

The York Regional Police and the Crown brought a certiorari application to quash five defence subpoenas issued for a preliminary hearing.

The subpoenas sought to compel police officers to attend for discovery and to produce documents related to the policy of not audio recording booking areas.

The court held that while discovery is a legitimate ancillary purpose of a preliminary hearing, subpoenas cannot be used as a disguised attempt to obtain disclosure, circumventing the Stinchcombe/O’Connor regime.

The court quashed the subpoenas as they pertained to the production of documents but ordered that four police witnesses attend for discovery purposes, subject to the preliminary hearing justice's discretion to limit unreasonable discovery.

This is a preliminary inquiry decision concerning charges of trafficking in cocaine and possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

The Crown proceeded largely through filed 540(7) materials.

The court applied the test for committal, which requires determining whether there is evidence upon which a reasonably instructed jury could convict beyond a reasonable doubt.

The case involved circumstantial evidence and required careful analysis of inferences that could be properly drawn from the evidence presented.

At a preliminary inquiry into charges of trafficking in cocaine arising from Project Keystorm, the Crown sought to commit the accused to stand trial on two counts: trafficking on March 19, 2015, and trafficking on April 9, 2015.

The accused conceded the evidence for the April 9 charge but contested the March 19 charge.

The central dispute concerned the admissibility and interpretation of an audio probe recording of a conversation between the accused and a co-conspirator in a vehicle.

The court found that the parties had agreed to the accuracy of the transcript and that the conversation, combined with subsequent intercepted communications, provided sufficient evidence for committal on both counts.

The accused pleaded guilty to two counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking in cocaine and one count of failure to comply with a recognizance.

The Crown sought five years imprisonment while the defence sought four years.

The court imposed a global sentence of four years, taking into account aggravating factors including the quantity of cocaine, the ongoing commercial enterprise, a prior conviction for similar offences, and breach of bail conditions, balanced against mitigating factors including the guilty plea, genuine remorse, youth, difficult childhood circumstances, and support from family.