Court of Appeal for Ontario
Before: Doherty, van Rensburg and Roberts JJ.A.
Between
Her Majesty the Queen
Respondent
and
Joshua Wardle
Appellant
Counsel:
Rodney Sellar, for the appellant
Rochelle Direnfeld, for the respondent
Heard: August 19, 2016
On appeal from the conviction entered by Justice B. MacPhee of the Ontario Court of Justice, dated December 9, 2013.
APPEAL BOOK ENDORSEMENT
1The appellant concedes, correctly in our view, that leave to appeal can be granted in this case only if we are satisfied that the proposed grounds of appeal have substantial merit. We allowed counsel to argue the merits in full.
2However, we are not satisfied that there are strong arguments that the Summary Conviction Appeal Court fell into legal error. In effect, counsel, in his oral submissions, invited this court to repeat the analysis performed by the Summary Conviction Appeal Court. That is not our function.
3Counsel did identify three alleged errors in the Summary Conviction Appeal Court judge’s reasons in his factum, but did not press these in oral argument. In our view, those alleged errors would not justify leave to appeal.
4Leave to appeal is refused.