Michael Dunn

The Attorney General applied for the civil forfeiture of a leisure-use sailboat under the Civil Remedies Act, 2001, after the owner was charged with operating the vessel while impaired.

The court dismissed the application, finding that the general forfeiture provisions of the Act were intended to target organized crime and serious criminal offences, not leisure boating.

The Crown failed to establish that it was likely the sailboat would be used for unlawful activity in the future or that such activity would likely result in serious bodily harm.

A physician applied under s. 24(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for remedies following an unlawful police search of his home computer that uncovered child pornography.

The criminal charges were withdrawn due to an invalid search warrant, but the physician’s professional regulator obtained a copy of the hard drive and commenced disciplinary proceedings.

The applicant sought orders requiring destruction of the copied hard drive and prohibiting the regulator from relying on the evidence in the discipline hearing.

The court assumed serious Charter breaches, including possible bad faith by police, but held that neither destruction nor prohibition was appropriate or just in the circumstances.

The Discipline Committee was best positioned to determine the admissibility of the evidence under s. 24(2) in the administrative proceeding.

The debtor company in CCAA proceedings brought a motion seeking a declaration that two Occupational Health and Safety Act prosecutions commenced by the provincial labour ministry were stayed by the CCAA initial order, or alternatively that the proceedings should be stayed under s. 11.1(4) of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

The debtor argued that any conviction would result only in monetary fines, rendering the ministry a creditor whose claim should be addressed within the insolvency process.

The court held that regulatory prosecutions are not equivalent to creditor enforcement where no monetary obligation has yet crystallized and the regulator is acting in a prosecutorial capacity.

Applying the Supreme Court’s test for regulatory claims under insolvency legislation, the court concluded that the ministry was not acting as a creditor and that the proceedings remained regulatory in nature.

The motion to declare the prosecutions stayed was therefore dismissed.