Supreme Court of Canada

The appeal concerned a constitutional challenge to the six-month mandatory minimum sentence for obtaining, or communicating for the purpose of obtaining, sexual services from a person under 18 for consideration.

The majority held that although the reasonably foreseeable youthful-offender hypothetical warranted a fit sentence of five months’ incarceration, the additional month required by the mandatory minimum did not meet the demanding standard of gross disproportionality under s. 12 of the Charter.

The Court emphasized the grave and inherently exploitative nature of child sexual commodification, the priority of denunciation and deterrence in sentencing such offences, and the need to exclude irrelevant sympathetic details from hypothetical scenarios.

The declaration of invalidity issued by the Court of Appeal was therefore set aside.

The appeal concerned whether police misconduct findings that were administratively expunged from an officer’s disciplinary record under provincial regulation remain subject to first party criminal disclosure.

The Court held that administrative expungement for police discipline purposes does not alter the constitutional disclosure regime, does not erase the underlying finding, and does not convert relevant misconduct records into third party records subject only to an O’Connor application.

Applying Stinchcombe, O’Connor and McNeil, the Court clarified that relevance is a low, utility-based threshold, that police must triage and transmit relevant misconduct information to the Crown, and that the Crown remains the ultimate arbiter of relevance with a duty to inquire when put on notice of potentially relevant information.

The appeal was dismissed, the motion to file further evidence was allowed, and solicitor-client costs were awarded to the accused against the police appellant.

The appeal concerned whether a defeated provincial election candidate could maintain a civil damages action against a chief electoral officer alleging bad-faith interference with his campaign.

The majority held that the claim was not a collateral attack on the election result, did not amount to an abuse of process, was not barred by parliamentary privilege, and was not precluded by the Election Act because the statutory immunity applied only to acts done in good faith.

Accepting the pleaded facts as true, the Court found the pleadings disclosed arguable claims in misfeasance in public office and trespass to chattel.

The majority declined to strike the loss of chance damages claim at the pleadings stage, while the dissent would have barred that head of damages on doctrinal and public policy grounds.

The appellant challenged the appointment of a unilingual Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick as inconsistent with the province’s constitutional language guarantees.

The majority held that s. 16(2) of the Charter, interpreted purposively and in light of New Brunswick’s unique constitutional commitment to substantive linguistic equality, requires the holder of that unipersonal and highly symbolic office to be able to understand and communicate in both official languages when performing their functions.

The Court concluded that this requirement limits the exercise of the appointment power under s. 58 of the Constitution Act, 1867, but does not invalidate the office itself or amount to a constitutional amendment.

The appeal was allowed and a declaration issued, while the appointment and prior acts of the office holder were left undisturbed.

A three-judge dissent would have held that the Charter guarantees institutional rather than personal bilingualism and does not constitutionally mandate a bilingual appointee.

The accused and a co-accused were jointly charged with firearms offences.

The trial was delayed beyond the 18-month Jordan ceiling, partly due to the unavailability of the co-accused's counsel.

The case management judge granted a stay of proceedings, finding the delay presumptively unreasonable and refusing to attribute the co-accused's delay to the accused.

The Court of Appeal affirmed.

The Supreme Court of Canada allowed the Crown's appeal, holding that delay caused by a co-accused in a joint trial can amount to a discrete exceptional circumstance.

Applying the four criteria from R. v. Tran, the Court found the joint trial was in the interests of justice, the delay arose from the joint trial, the delay was reasonably unavoidable, and the Crown could not have reasonably ameliorated it.

The delay was deducted, bringing the net delay under the ceiling, and the stay was set aside.

The accused was convicted of second degree murder after the victim was found beaten to death.

At trial, the judge relied on an out-of-court statement made by the victim during a phone call to establish the timeline of events and the accused's exclusive opportunity to commit the murder.

The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and ordered a new trial, finding the trial judge impermissibly relied on the hearsay statement for the truth of its contents.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the Crown's appeal, confirming that the trial judge's reasons unambiguously relied on the out-of-court statement for its truth without a proper hearsay exception analysis, necessitating a new trial.

The appellant appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Court unanimously dismissed the appeal from the bench, substantially for the reasons of the majority of the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan.

The Crown appealed a decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The respondent brought a motion to adduce new evidence, which was allowed.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal from the bench, with written reasons to follow.

The Supreme Court of Canada considered whether to recognize a new tort of intimate partner violence in the context of family law proceedings.

The appellant wife had suffered a 16-year pattern of physical, psychological, and financial abuse by her husband.

The majority of the Court recognized the new tort of intimate partner violence, focusing on the harm of coercive control and the deprivation of autonomy, dignity, and equality.

The Court allowed the appeal in part, modifying the trial judge's damages award to fall entirely under general compensatory damages for the new tort.

The dissenting judges argued that existing torts were sufficient to compensate the wife and that recognizing a new tort was unnecessary and procedurally inappropriate in this case.

Appeal concerning whether a mortgagee that had been denied inclusion of a $4 million collateral mortgage in a prior judicial accounting could later assert entitlement to payment from the same power-of-sale proceeds.

The majority held that res judicata had been adequately pleaded and raised at first instance and that cause of action estoppel barred the appellant from advancing a new theory in support of the same entitlement claim.

The Court held that the prior and subsequent proceedings concerned the same cause of action, namely the validity, value, and priority of encumbrances in the judicial accounting, and that all reasonably available arguments should have been advanced in the earlier proceeding.

The appeal was dismissed with party-and-party costs.

Three judges dissented, disagreeing on whether res judicata had been raised in time and whether estoppel should apply.

The appellant challenged the constitutional validity of s. 12 of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act, which bars committee members from invoking parliamentary privilege in proceedings arising from prohibited disclosures of protected information.

The majority held that s. 18 of the Constitution Act, 1867 authorizes Parliament not only to supplement but also to limit parliamentary privilege, subject to constraints derived from constitutional text, purpose, and structure.

It concluded that s. 12 imposed only a narrow limitation connected to national security oversight and did not fundamentally undermine Parliament’s role or effect an amendment requiring Part V procedures under the Constitution Act, 1982.

The appeal was dismissed, with a dissent concluding the provision unconstitutionally delegated control over parliamentary speech to the executive and enforcement to the courts.

The Supreme Court of Canada heard an appeal from the Court of Appeal of Quebec.

A majority of the Court dismissed the appeal orally from the bench, with written reasons to follow.

Two justices dissented and would have allowed the appeal, also with reasons to follow.

The respondents were charged with offences relating to cannabis production, and their property was seized.

The charges were stayed due to unreasonable delay under s. 11(b) of the Charter.

The Crown subsequently applied for forfeiture of the seized property.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that while the Court of Québec lacked jurisdiction under provisions tied to trial and sentencing (ss. 462.37 and 491.1 Cr.

C. and s. 16 CDSA), it retained jurisdiction under the residual disposition provision (s. 490(9) Cr.

C.).

The stay of proceedings did not preclude the Crown from seeking forfeiture, as forfeiture proceedings are distinct from criminal liability proceedings and do not engage double jeopardy.

The appellant sought to introduce fresh evidence on appeal following a criminal conviction, arguing that the new witness evidence was reasonably capable of belief on key points relating to self-defence.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the application for lack of cogency.

The Supreme Court of Canada, by majority, found no reviewable error in the Court of Appeal's cogency analysis and dismissed the appeal.

In dissent, Karakatsanis and Côté JJ. would have allowed the appeal, finding that the majority erred in law by making its own determination of the witness's ultimate credibility in the cogency analysis and by erring in the due diligence analysis, and would have admitted the fresh evidence and ordered a new trial.

The appellant appealed a judgment of the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan.

The Supreme Court of Canada delivered an oral judgment dismissing the appeal and ordering the appellant to surrender himself into custody within 48 hours, with reasons to follow.

The appellant's spouse disappeared in 2008.

In 2016, the appellant obtained a declaratory judgment of death.

The respondent life insurance company subsequently applied to annul the judgment, presenting evidence that the spouse was alive and living in Iran, but failed to serve the spouse with the application.

The trial judge annulled the declaratory judgment of death, finding on a balance of probabilities that the spouse had 'returned' within the meaning of the Civil Code of Québec.

The Court of Appeal upheld the decision.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal, holding that while the failure to serve the spouse was a procedural defect, it did not warrant dismissal of the application as it caused no prejudice.

The Court further held that the 'return' of a person declared dead can be established by any contemporaneous manifestation that they are alive, proved on a balance of probabilities, without requiring their physical return or a higher standard of certainty.

The appellant appealed a criminal conviction upheld by the Court of Appeal for Ontario.

The Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal and delivered an oral judgment the same day, unanimously dismissing the appeal and upholding the conviction.

Short reasons were indicated to follow.

The Crown appealed from the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal's decision acquitting the respondent of refusing to comply with a breath demand.

Police had entered a private driveway to investigate an impaired driving complaint, found the accused asleep in a running truck, knocked on the window without response, then opened the truck door and detected a strong odour of alcohol.

The majority held that police had an implied licence to enter the driveway and knock on the truck window, but exceeded that licence by opening the door, constituting an unreasonable search under s. 8 of the Charter.

However, the evidence should not be excluded under s. 24(2) given society's strong interest in prosecuting the serious offence.

Four justices dissented, finding that the police exceeded the implied licence from the moment they entered the property with the intent to gather evidence, and that the evidence should be excluded.

The appellant challenged the constitutionality of s. 3 of Quebec's Reduced Contribution Regulation, which excluded refugee claimants from eligibility for subsidized childcare.

The majority found the provision created an adverse impact distinction based on sex and on refugee claimant status (an analogous ground under s. 15(1) of the Charter), and that this distinction was discriminatory as it reinforced disadvantage.

The infringement was not justified under s. 1.

The Court read refugee claimants into s. 3 of the Regulation as an eligible category.

One justice dissented, concluding neither sex-based nor refugee-claimant-status-based discrimination was established.

The appellants challenged a criminal appeal judgment from the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal and delivered an oral ruling the same day.

The Court held that the appeal should be dismissed, substantially for the reasons of the majority below.

The intervener participated, but the dispositive issue was resolved by adopting the appellate majority's reasoning.