The defendant appealed his conviction for careless driving, challenging the trial judge's dismissal of a Charter section 11(b) application regarding delay in trial.
The defendant was charged on August 22, 2014, and tried on October 5, 2015, approximately 13.5 months later.
The trial judge accepted an unsupported assertion by defence counsel that the defendant had attended court in person requesting a trial but was compelled to attend an early resolution meeting instead.
The appellate court found this assertion had no evidentiary foundation and was not supported by the defendant's affidavit.
The court held that the time to the resolution meeting should have been excluded from the Charter calculation, and that the remaining delay was within constitutional tolerance for a careless driving charge.
