R v Wallace, 2025 ONCJ 663
ONTARIO COURT OF JUSTICE
BETWEEN:
HIS MAJESTY THE KING
-- AND --
JASON WALLACE
Before Justice Fergus ODonnell
Reasons for Sentence Delivered Orally On 8 November, 2025
Heather Donkers — for the Crown
Mabel Pastrana — for the defendant, Jason Wallace
Fergus ODonnell J.:
Overview
1Jason Wallace has pleaded guilty to a charge of disobeying a court order contrary to s. 127 of the Criminal Code. The Crown has proceeded by indictment. The maximum available sentence for this offence is two years' imprisonment. The Crown seeks a sentence of one year in jail less pre-sentence custody. Mr. Wallace seeks a "time-served" sentence. As of today, applying the typical ratio of credit for pre-sentence custody, which reflects the fact that such custody does not earn remission as a forward-reaching sentence would, Mr. Wallace has the equivalent of four months in custody to his credit.
2The order here was made under provincial legislation, namely Ontario's Prevention of and Remedies for Human Trafficking Act, 2017, S.O. 2017, c. 12, which allows for restraining orders and other remedies to issue relating to people who are reasonably believed to have been victims of human trafficking at the hands of the person who is the object of the order or for whom there are reasonable grounds to believe may be future victims at the hands of the person who is the object of the order. That order was issued by Justice Calderwood of this court on 21 June, 2024 and served on Mr. Wallace six days later. I have heard nothing to suggest that any steps were ever taken to overturn or vary that order as the provincial legislation allows for. The order prohibits Mr. Wallace from contacting or communicating with Ms. M., directly or indirectly and from being within five hundred metres of her or any place she is or may reasonably be known to be.
3As the provincial law here does not provide its own mechanism for enforcement, any alleged breaches justifiably are addressed through s. 127 of the Criminal Code.
4The facts underlying the plea are very simple. Ms. M. was at the casino with her mother. Mr. Wallace was there, saw her at a table, tapped her on the shoulder and asked if she was winning. She did not respond. Mr. Wallace smirked at her and then stood behind her for ten minutes before walking away.
5Ms. M. filed a victim impact statement by way of a written form and also a recording of a song she had written. The contents of those inputs are trenchant.
6The Crown seeks a sentence of twelve months' imprisonment less pre-sentence custody followed by twelve months of probation including reporting, victim safeguards to match the restraint order and counselling. Ms. Donkers points to Mr. Wallace's criminal record as the most aggravating circumstance here. I shall detail that later, but she points out that Mr. Wallace has 2019 convictions for advertising sexual services and deriving a material benefit therefrom, for which he received the equivalent of a nine-month sentence (the Crown had sought eighteen months' imprisonment). Those convictions did not relate to Ms. M., but rather to a nineteen-year-old victim. Coincidentally, that sentencing was before me. Ms. Donkers argues that throughout his long record Mr. Wallace has multiple convictions for disobeying court orders for which he has received various sentences up to about ninety days' imprisonment (some were fines or suspended sentences) and she says that he clearly does not care about court orders and has not been deterred by past dispositions.
7Ms. Pastrana seeks a sentence of time-served for Mr. Wallace. She notes an early guilty plea, which is definitely a mitigating circumstance, both from a practical perspective for the court system but also very much in terms of saving the victim from the stress of the court process. Ms. Pastrana argues that Ms. M. has never been found to have been the victim of human-trafficking, which may be true but is not the question before me. The reality before me is that a judge of this court was satisfied there were reasonable grounds for issuance of the order that was specific to Ms. M. and Mr. Wallace and he disobeyed it. I give more weight to the fact that this was not a stalking type of violation of the restraining order in the sense that there is no evidence to suggest that this was anything other than a coincidental co-location at that time and place, although I would say that the absence of stalking type behaviour is more the absence of what would have been a huge aggravating factor rather than being a mitigating factor. Ms. Pastrana also says that it was not clear that Mr. Wallace knew it was Ms. M. on approach, but his plea includes an admission of knowledge that what he did violated the order. She says there was no intimidation, but the fact remains that he admittedly smirked and then loitered behind her for ten minutes; intimidation may lie in the eye of the victim, reasonably so.
8Ms. Pastrana also argued that the fact that Ms. M. stayed minimizes the offence, which I must strongly reject. Her staying may have been a fear response for all I know, knowing that she would be relatively physically safe in a heavily secured area like a casino, or it may even have been a non-verbal statement on her part that despite the violation of the order she would not let Mr. Wallace control her life. It matters not: she was entitled to be where she was and while Mr. Wallace is also entitled to go to the casino, he has an obligation not to make contact and, once he knows she is there, to establish at least a five hundred metre distance -- immediately.
9Ms. Pastrana also referred to Mr. Wallace's conditions in custody, as did he, including over-bunking, poor conditions, etc. No records were filed in this regard, although there is some room for judicial notice to be taken of that, up to a certain point and obviously with lesser weight than if specific details were documented and accepted.
10Ms. Pastrana also referred to Mr. Wallace having had an awful upbringing generating significant trauma, beginning with a father who was violent to Mr. Wallace's mother, his mother being violent to the children -- especially Mr. Wallace's sisters -- and Mr. Wallace's sisters being physically and sexually abusive towards him. She also referred to him having been the victim of a sexual assault by another inmate in his early years. She explained Mr. Wallace's very challenging experience with the near death of his daughter at birth and her very difficult circumstances to the present day, as well as his own serious cardiac issues.
11Mr. Wallace spoke at some length, including recounting his view that a police officer had lied about Ms. M.'s lack of desire to be with Mr. Wallace and Ms. M.'s pursuit of him, as well as saying that she had been found incredible in a child abuse trial before another judge.
12Mr. Wallace's record runs from 1996 to 2024. There is only one substantial gap, for about five-and-a-half years from 2005-2011 (by substantial gap, I mean anything longer than about two or three years). As noted earlier, Ms. M. was not the victim in Mr. Wallace's 2019 pleas before me, but she was his victim in a 2021 conviction for failure to comply with probation in St. Catharines and a failure to comply with a recognizance conviction and failure to comply with an undertaking conviction in Barrie in 2023. The record includes pre-2000 convictions for sexual interference and criminal harassment and includes various property and assaultive convictions.
13Mr. Wallace has taken some steps to address his underlying issues. He provided a letter that showed he had done four anger-management sessions while in custody. A psychologist he saw during his probation wrote about Mr. Wallace having attended sixteen sessions with him (and missing six), with missed sessions and slow response times limiting his ability to assist Mr. Wallace. Mr. Wallace had independently reached out three times while in crisis. The letter is a mixed reflection, addressing Mr. Wallace's openness to discussion, his forthrightness and willingness to discuss his feelings, but it ends with the disturbing observation: "Although he exhibited insight into his attitudes, values, and behaviours, he rigidly defended his actions and beliefs even when he was able to concede that they were not always in his best interests. Overall, he appeared to enjoy challenging social policies and laws and living a lifestyle that may often straddle the law."
14It is my job to impose a sentence that responds to the objectives of sentencing including specific deterrence (a clear need here) 1 and general deterrence, wherein the importance of obeying court orders actually resonates. I must consider the protection of the public and also the need for rehabilitation. In a big picture sense I must balance the seriousness of the crime with the moral responsibility of the offender.
15Taking at face value Ms. Pastrana's description of Mr. Wallace's upbringing, I accept that Mr. Wallace's life and offending does reflect the wisdom of W.H. Auden's poem 1 September, 1939, albeit written in a different context, that "those to whom evil is done, do evil in return." The challenges that arise from that sort of background can be enormous and not easily addressed. They do deserve measure in the moral responsibility analysis, but they are not a get-out-of-jail-free card, particularly so where there have been multiple state interventions by way of probation and the like and limited progress. I accept that there is some insight on Mr. Wallace's part here and some willingness to engage, but the psychologist's letter does very much seem to teeter on the balance between hope for improvement and signs of disinterest on Mr. Wallace's part in changing anything.
16As far as his version of his and Ms. M.'s relationship, I do not know the chapter and verse. There may be some merit to what he says or there may not. It is certainly not an element that I would treat as a demonstrated mitigating factor. Even if that history were true, however, and whatever Mr. Wallace's mental health challenges are, what Justice Calderwood's order required of Mr. Wallace was as simple as it was easy to adhere to: in non-judicial language it said: leave Ms. M. alone and stay away from her. He made a conscious choice to ignore that very simple demand from the court order.
17The offence is a serious one. There is a tendency, sometimes for pragmatic reasons, sometimes for principled reasons relating to the seriousness of the breach, its being rooted in survival or homelessness or addiction challenges or whatever, for the courts to impose again and again and again, sentences for breaches at or below the low-reformatory sentences seen with Mr. Wallace, perhaps a month or two or three. 2 That is not the issue here. This is a case in which Mr. Wallace has a long and established history of disobeying court orders and there is quite simply nothing to be said in mitigation of what he did that day. He saw, he breached, he lingered. He may have behaved in haste, but he must now regret at leisure.
18Mr. Wallace's history shows he has no respect whatsoever for court orders. I accept that, but for his guilty plea, the Crown could have sought a longer sentence. I accept that this is not a case for a mere incremental increase. 3 The simple fact is that after a long series of breach after breach after breach, an offender will have earned a leap and not a step and that public safety will require it. That applies both for Criminal Code breaches generally and also for breaches of this provincial law in light of the enormous toll human trafficking has on its victims and those who care for them. Again, whether or not Ms. M. has been proved to have been Mr. Wallace's human-trafficking victim to a criminal standard in court before, that is not the issue: a court issued an order under the legislation, applying the applicable standard, Mr. Wallace did not challenge the order and he breached it blatantly. It might even be argued that the very public nature of his breach in a place known to be full of CCTV bespeaks a wantonness on his part.
19Mr. Wallace has four months of Summers credit; I would enhance that to five months to make a limited allowance for Duncan credit on the very finite record before me. I otherwise accept the Crown's submission that a twelve-month sentence would be appropriate after balancing the mitigating and aggravating circumstances. Accordingly, five months credit for pre-sentence custody shall be noted towards sentence. Mr. Wallace will spend a further seven months in custody.
20Thereafter he shall be on probation for two years. Counsel may address the appropriate conditions.
Released: 13 December, 2025
Footnotes
- Quite apart from Mr. Wallace's general disinclination to obey court orders, he has multiple convictions for disobeying orders (and an undertaking) relating to the same victim.
- While this does not serve in any way as an ex post facto explanation for the sentence imposed, Mr. Wallace's very long and strident outburst in court after the imposition of sentence would appear to be consistent with an expectation on his part that any breaches of court orders would forever be met with a sentence of a month here or a couple of months there and that the duration of his sentences would not increase as his numbers of convictions increased.
- Generally speaking a sentencing court will impose moderate increases for subsequent offences for which an offender has previous convictions, avoiding large leaps in order to avoid undermining the objective of rehabilitation. However, the "step" principle is not iron-clad. At a certain point, an offender with multiple breach convictions ought not to be surprised if a subsequent sentencing leads to a leap rather than a step. Such a leap represents a realization that for some offenders incremental increases (or even sentences matching previous sentences for similar offences) are incapable of bringing out any awareness on the offender's part of the seriousness of his or her pattern of disregard for court orders. This is such a case.