Robert W. Hubbard

The accused brought a pre‑trial motion seeking particulars requiring the Crown to specify the alleged misrepresentations, fraudulent conduct, and false accounting entries underlying charges relating to financial reporting of a public corporation.

The motion relied on s. 587 of the Criminal Code, arguing that the indictment lacked sufficient detail for the preparation of a defence.

The court reviewed the extensive investigations, disclosure, and related regulatory proceedings already known to the accused and concluded that they were aware of the case they had to meet.

The court held that the areas of dispute were sufficiently delineated and that further particulars were unnecessary for trial fairness or evidentiary rulings.

The application for particulars was dismissed.

The appellant, a police informer, had their identity and confidential information inadvertently recorded during a police interview.

The police and Crown failed to verify the appellant's informer status or redact the transcript, resulting in the full interview being disclosed to defence counsel in another case.

The appellant suffered retribution in custody.

The trial judge dismissed the appellant's application for a stay of proceedings.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal found the conduct of the police and Crown amounted to gross negligence and breached the absolute class privilege of informers.

The appeal was allowed and a stay of proceedings was entered.

The appellant appealed his conviction for fraud on the public, arguing the trial judge provided inadequate reasons, failed to instruct herself on the dangers of unconfirmed evidence, and rendered inconsistent verdicts.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the trial judge's decision rested on independent evidence establishing the appellant's intent to defraud by inflating revenue figures.

The court also found the verdicts were not inconsistent, as the fraudulent intent was formed after the loans were made but before the public relied on the false financial statements.

The Crown's appeal of the acquittals was dismissed as abandoned.

The appellants, a newspaper and its journalists, received an allegedly forged document from a confidential source implicating the Prime Minister in a conflict of interest.

The police obtained a search warrant and assistance order to seize the document and its envelope to identify the source through forensic testing.

The appellants challenged the warrant, claiming a constitutional or common law journalist-source privilege.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that while s. 2(b) of the Charter does not provide a blanket constitutional immunity for journalists, a case-by-case privilege may be established using the Wigmore criteria.

On the facts, the public interest in investigating the serious crime of forgery outweighed the public interest in protecting the confidential source.

The search warrant and assistance order were upheld as reasonable under s. 8 of the Charter.

The respondents pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death after driving at excessive speeds and colliding with a taxi, killing the driver.

At a pre-trial conference, the Crown undertook not to appeal if conditional sentences were imposed.

The trial judge imposed conditional sentences of two years less a day with house arrest for the first year, plus a four-year driving prohibition.

The Attorney General appealed the sentences.

The Court of Appeal held that the Crown's undertaking did not bar the Attorney General's statutory right to appeal and did not constitute an abuse of process.

While the trial judge did not err in principle in imposing conditional sentences, the sentences were demonstrably unfit as they lacked sufficient punitive conditions to address denunciation and general deterrence.

The Court allowed the appeal, extending the house arrest to the full term of the sentences and increasing the driving prohibitions to seven years.

The media applied to unseal search warrant materials related to a murder investigation.

The application judge ordered partial unsealing.

Both an accused (Gardiner) and the media appealed.

The Court of Appeal dismissed Gardiner's appeal, finding no error in the partial release.

The Court also dismissed the media's appeal, noting that while the application judge's reasons were inadequate for appellate review, remitting the matter would interfere with a publication ban already imposed by the trial judge.

The applicants (accused) brought a motion for directions seeking a disclosure order regarding an in-chambers pre-sentence meeting before the trial judge, relevant to the Crown's sentence appeal.

The Crown confirmed it possessed no written records of the meeting and conceded it could not contradict the applicants' version of the essential facts.

Consequently, the Court of Appeal found no purpose would be served by a disclosure order and directed the applicants to prepare a draft statement of agreed facts based on their version of events.

The Crown appealed a decision quashing a search warrant and assistance order that required the National Post to produce a forged document and envelope received from a confidential source.

The reviewing judge had found the warrant violated s. 2(b) of the Charter and the items were protected by journalist-confidential source privilege.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding no jurisdictional error in proceeding ex parte, and holding that the fourth Wigmore criterion was not met because the law enforcement interest in investigating a serious crime (forgery) outweighed the benefit of protecting the confidential source.

The appellant, a Canadian businessman, was investigated by the RCMP for money laundering.

RCMP officers conducted searches of the appellant's investment company office in the Turks and Caicos Islands under the authority of the local police.

At trial, the appellant sought to exclude documentary evidence obtained during the searches, arguing that the searches violated his s. 8 Charter rights.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that the Charter does not generally apply to searches and seizures conducted by Canadian officials in foreign jurisdictions, as this would interfere with the territorial sovereignty of the foreign state.

The evidence was admissible as its admission did not render the trial unfair.

The applicant, charged with first degree murder, applied under s. 680(1) of the Criminal Code for a review of his detention order.

The court found no realistic likelihood that a panel would interfere with the lower court's decision, particularly regarding the tertiary ground for detention under s. 515(10)(c).

The court noted the strong circumstantial case, including motive, opportunity, and gunshot residue, as well as the egregious circumstances of the planned killing.

The application was dismissed.

The Crown appealed a trial judge's order dismissing an application under s. 37 of the Canada Evidence Act and ordering the disclosure of edited police files relating to a confidential informer.

The accused, charged with weapons offences after a police stop based on an informer's tip, sought the files to challenge the search under the Charter.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, holding that the trial judge erred in finding that the edited documents would not tend to identify the informer.

Given the precise details provided by the informer, the pool of potential informers was very small, and any disclosure risked violating informer privilege.

The appellant appealed a summary conviction appeal court decision regarding a dangerous driving conviction.

The appellant argued that the summary conviction appeal court judge misapplied the curative proviso after the trial judge allegedly misstated the legal test for dangerous driving.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge did not err or depart from the correct legal test.

The Crown appealed the acquittal of a youth charged with drug possession for the purpose of trafficking.

Police officers conducted a random, warrantless search of a high school using a sniffer dog, which reacted to the youth's unattended backpack in the gymnasium.

The police searched the backpack and found marijuana and psilocybin.

The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's finding that the dog sniff and subsequent physical search violated the youth's section 8 Charter rights, as students have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their backpacks and the search was not authorized by law or conducted reasonably.

The court affirmed the exclusion of the evidence under section 24(2) of the Charter, dismissing the appeal.

The appellant appealed his committal for extradition to Germany and applied for judicial review of the Minister of Justice's decision to surrender him.

Germany sought the appellant's extradition on charges of tax evasion, fraud, forgery, and bribery related to secret commissions earned from international arms and aircraft sales.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding sufficient evidence to justify committal and holding that the double criminality rule was satisfied for the tax offences.

The Court also dismissed the application for judicial review, concluding that the Minister did not err in interpreting the extradition treaty, assessing the evidence, or finding that surrender would not be unjust or oppressive.

The appellant appealed a decision of the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal, which had set aside his acquittal on a charge of possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal, agreeing with the majority of the Court of Appeal that there was sufficient material before the Justice of the Peace to support the issuance of the search warrant.

The appellant and a co-accused were convicted of trafficking in heroin following a joint trial before a judge and jury.

The appellant appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial judge erred in the jury charge by conflating his defence with that of his co-defendant.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the trial judge repeatedly instructed the jury to consider each accused separately and that the recharge clarified any potential confusion.

The sentence appeal was also dismissed as no submissions were made.

The appellant was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting his wife 13 times and was sentenced to life imprisonment with 15 years of parole ineligibility.

On appeal, he argued that the trial was rendered unfair because the Crown retained and obtained notes from a psychiatrist initially consulted by the defence, breaching privilege.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding that privilege was likely waived and no prejudice resulted since the Crown did not lead the evidence.

The Court also dismissed arguments regarding jury instructions on automatism, section 16, and reasonable doubt.

However, the sentence appeal was allowed, and parole ineligibility was reduced to 13 years because the trial judge improperly relied on unproven hearsay evidence of a prior attempted murder as an aggravating factor.

The appellants were convicted of conspiracy related to the illegal entry of individuals into Canada.

They appealed their convictions, arguing that the trial judge erred in admitting intercepted communications obtained pursuant to Ontario wiretap authorizations that relied on evidence from a Quebec authorization.

The appellant Kullman also argued that the trial judge erred in admitting hearsay statements of his co-conspirator under the Carter approach, arguing it did not meet the necessity and reliability criteria established in Starr.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals, finding no jurisdictional defects in the wiretap authorizations and holding that the traditional co-conspirators' exception to the hearsay rule survives the principled approach established in Starr.

The appellants appealed a decision of the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal finding an Internet lottery scheme unlawful under the Criminal Code.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal from the bench, adopting the reasons of the Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island.

The appellant was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of his mother, aunt, and cousin.

At trial, he denied involvement, but his counsel advanced a defence of not criminally responsible (NCR) due to mental disorder.

The Crown called reply evidence from psychiatrists who had assessed the appellant under court order.

On appeal, the appellant challenged the constitutionality of the psychiatric assessment provisions, the jury instructions on the sequence of considering the NCR defence, the Crown's closing address, and the admission of evidence from a warrantless police entry into his apartment.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the constitutional challenge could not be raised for the first time on appeal due to a tactical decision at trial, the jury instructions did not constitute reversible error, and the warrantless entry was justified by exigent circumstances.