Paul Slansky

The appellant brought motions to review two orders of a single judge: one directing his motion to remove respondents' counsel to be heard immediately, and another dismissing that removal motion with costs.

The respondents brought a motion to review a third order to impose a deadline for the payment of those costs.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appellant's motions, finding the scheduling order practical and the proposed fresh evidence irrelevant.

The Court granted the respondents' motion, ordering the appellant to pay the previously awarded costs and the costs of these motions by a specified date, failing which his appeal would be dismissed.

The appellant brought a motion to remove counsel for two respondents based on allegations of misconduct in the underlying contempt proceedings.

The respondents brought a cross-motion for security for costs of the appeal.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the removal motion, finding no basis for the allegations and awarding full indemnity costs against the appellant.

The Court also dismissed the motion for security for costs, finding that the appeal raised a non-frivolous legal issue regarding the appellant's ability to purge his contempt after the underlying action had been settled, which involved the liberty of the subject.

The appellants appealed a committal order for extradition and applied for judicial review of a surrender order.

They were sought for prosecution in Pennsylvania for their role in a human trafficking scheme.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and the application for judicial review, rejecting arguments related to ulterior motives, disclosure of witness names, certification, limitation periods, indirect refoulement, double jeopardy, and the need for assurances against persecution.

The applicant, a Canadian citizen who previously held refugee status, sought judicial review of the Minister of Justice's decision ordering her surrender for extradition to the Czech Republic.

She argued that under the Supreme Court's decision in Németh, her prior refugee status required the Minister to refuse surrender unless circumstances had changed.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application, holding that Németh did not apply because the applicant's refugee status ceased when she acquired Canadian citizenship.

The Court also rejected arguments that her extradition violated her Charter mobility or equality rights, and found the Minister's decision regarding her health to be reasonable.

The appellant, a dual Canadian and Hungarian citizen with no refugee status, was committed for extradition to Hungary on fraud charges.

The Minister of Justice ordered his unconditional surrender.

The appellant appealed the committal and sought judicial review of the surrender order, arguing that the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Németh altered the burden of proof under section 44(1) of the Extradition Act.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and application, holding that Németh applies only to individuals with refugee status and does not alter the burden of proof for non-refugees.

The Court found no error in the committal order or the Minister's conclusion that surrender would not be unjust or oppressive.

The applicant, a federal inmate, applied for a writ of habeas corpus and Charter relief to challenge his security classification, his correctional plan requiring sex offender programming, and the anticipated denial of his statutory release.

The Superior Court of Justice dismissed the application, holding that habeas corpus is not available to review a refusal to transfer to a lower security facility or to challenge a correctional plan.

The court further held that absent a valid habeas corpus claim, it lacked jurisdiction to grant Charter remedies regarding the administration of the sentence, as exclusive jurisdiction rests with the Federal Court.

The challenge to the anticipated denial of statutory release was also dismissed as premature.

The Crown appealed the 12-year sentence imposed on the respondent for his role in a terrorist bomb plot targeting locations in Toronto.

The respondent had pleaded guilty to doing anything with intent to cause an explosion for the benefit of a terrorist group.

The Court of Appeal found the sentencing judge over-emphasized mitigating factors and under-emphasized the enormity of the crime.

The effective sentence was increased from 12 to 18 years, and an order was made requiring the respondent to serve one half of his sentence before being eligible for full parole.

The appellant appealed a partial summary judgment granted in favour of the respondent bank, which was based on the appellant's criminal conviction for fraud relating to the same transactions.

The appellant sought to introduce fresh evidence alleging ineffective assistance by her civil and criminal counsel.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no error by the motion judge and concluding that the fresh evidence lacked a credible basis.

The court held that allowing the appeal would permit an abuse of process by relitigating the summary judgment, the criminal conviction, and the criminal trial.

The appellant appealed his committal for extradition to the United States on charges of fraud and sought judicial review of the Minister of Justice's decision to surrender him.

He argued that the extradition judge and the Minister erred by failing to order disclosure of Canadian investigative materials, alleging Charter breaches and illegalities by Canadian and American authorities.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and the application for judicial review, finding that the requesting state did not rely on the Canadian evidence, there was no air of reality to the Charter claims, and the limited right to disclosure in extradition proceedings was not violated.

The applicant sought judicial review of the Minister of Justice's order surrendering him to the United States.

He argued that the Minister's letter ordering surrender did not give adequate reasons.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application, finding that while the reasons were perfunctory, they were adequate.

The Minister considered the applicant's section 6 Charter rights, health concerns, and the Cotroni factors, which overwhelmingly pointed to prosecution in the United States.

The appellant appealed a committal order for extradition, arguing that sections 32(1) and 34 of the Extradition Act are unconstitutional.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, noting that the constitutional issue had already been decided against the appellant's position in a previous decision.

The appellant appealed an order committing him for surrender to the United States for conspiracy to launder proceeds of crime.

The primary issue was whether identification evidence gathered in Canada by a foreign officer and included in the record of the case was admissible under section 32(2) of the Extradition Act without requiring viva voce testimony.

The Court of Appeal held that evidence lawfully gathered in Canada and substantively admissible under Canadian law does not need to take the form of viva voce testimony at the extradition hearing.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant appealed his committal for extradition to the United States on narcotics charges and sought judicial review of the Minister's surrender decision.

He argued that the new Extradition Act's evidentiary provisions were unconstitutional, that time limits for the authority to proceed were breached, and that the extradition judge erred in his assessment of the conduct and evidence.

He also challenged the Minister's surrender decision on Charter grounds.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and the application for judicial review, finding the legislation constitutional, the time limits functionally met, the committal justified by the evidence, and the Minister's surrender decision reasonable.

The appellant appealed her committal for surrender and applied for judicial review of the Minister's surrender order.

She challenged the constitutionality of the new Extradition Act, which the Court of Appeal dismissed based on its previous decision in United States of America v. Yang.

She also argued that the surrender would be unfair and oppressive and that the Minister's reasons were inadequate.

The Court found no substance to her allegations and held that the Minister's reasons were adequate.

The appeal and application for judicial review were dismissed.

The appellant appealed a decision regarding stolen vehicles.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that information retrieved by a U.S. customs officer from a computer system was not gathered in Canada merely because it referred to Canadian auto thefts.

The Court also found ample evidence of identification and that the vehicles were stolen, noting the appellant had placed false VIN numbers over the original ones.

The appellant applied for judicial review of the Minister of Justice's surrender order and appealed an order under s. 69 of the Extradition Act.

The appellant argued that the Minister's decision constituted an abuse of process, violated s. 6(1) of the Charter, and failed to adequately consider his claims of ill health.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application and the appeal, finding no air of reality to the abuse of process claim, that the Minister's decision was reasonable under the Charter, and that the medical claims were unsubstantiated.

The appellant was charged with drug offences in Canada and subsequently indicted in the United States.

The Canadian charges were stayed to allow extradition proceedings to the United States to proceed.

The appellant appealed the refusal to set aside the stay of the Canadian charges and the order committing him for extradition, arguing the proceedings were an abuse of process and violated his s. 7 Charter rights.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals, finding no basis to interfere with the Crown's discretion to stay the domestic charges and concluding that the appellant's abuse of process claims regarding the extradition had no realistic possibility of success.

A related motion for production of documents was also largely dismissed.

The appellant was convicted of the first degree murder of his brother.

The Crown's case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a jailhouse informant who claimed the appellant confessed to the murder.

On appeal, the appellant argued the trial judge erred in failing to give a Vetrovec warning regarding the informant, misdirected the jury on after-the-fact conduct, and provided an inadequate charge on reasonable doubt.

The Court of Appeal agreed, finding that the informant's severe credibility issues necessitated a Vetrovec warning, the trial judge improperly left equivocal demeanour evidence to the jury as consciousness of guilt, and the pre-Lifchus reasonable doubt charge failed to properly locate the standard above probability.

The appeal was allowed and a new trial ordered.

The appellant appealed his conviction for sexual assault, seeking to introduce fresh evidence that he was in custody on a date the complainant claimed to have seen him prior to the offence.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion to introduce fresh evidence and the appeal, finding that the specific date was of no particular significance in the context of the trial and the fresh evidence could not reasonably be expected to have affected the trial judge's acceptance of the identification evidence.

The appellants challenged a s. 37 order sustaining Crown objections to questions that might reveal the identity of a confidential source described in a wiretap affidavit.

The Court of Appeal held that even if the source acted as a police agent in an unrelated stolen-goods transaction, that did not convert the source into an agent for all purposes or in relation to the appellants' drug investigation.

The court further held that, even assuming the Crown's earlier characterization of the source as an agent in the wiretap materials created prejudice and amounted to an abuse of process, compelled disclosure of identity was unavailable because informer privilege must be protected if it in fact applies.

Any appropriate remedy would instead lie, if warranted, in a Garofoli challenge to the authorization and possible exclusion of intercepted evidence.