SCC 2024

The appellant was convicted of robbery and having his face masked with intent to commit an indictable offence, based primarily on the recognition evidence of an unsavoury Vetrovec witness.

The appellant argued the trial judge failed to apply the requisite scrutiny to the unsavoury witness's evidence.

The majority held that the trial judge recognized the Vetrovec dangers, applied the requisite scrutiny, and was entitled to accept the recognition evidence without corroboration upon finding it credible and reliable.

The dissent would have allowed the appeal on the basis that the conviction arose from a failure to apply sufficient scrutiny, particularly given that the alleged confession was recounted only after the witness had already identified the accused from surveillance footage.

The appellant was acquitted of second degree murder and manslaughter at trial by judge alone after applying a chokehold to the deceased, who lost consciousness and died.

The trial judge found the Crown had not established the requisite subjective mens rea for murder, and that self-defence applied to the lesser included offence of manslaughter.

The Nunavut Court of Appeal allowed the Crown's appeal and ordered a new trial, finding errors of law in the trial judge's analysis of mens rea for murder and application of self-defence.

The Supreme Court of Canada allowed the further appeal and restored the acquittal, holding that the Crown's right to appeal an acquittal under s. 676(1)(a) of the Criminal Code is limited to questions of law alone, that the Court of Appeal failed to precisely identify any such error, and that there is no legal rule that a chokehold is always an inherently dangerous act requiring specific findings on mens rea.

The trial judge's self-defence analysis correctly applied an objective standard under each element of s. 34 of the Criminal Code.

Appeal concerning the scope of corrective powers conferred on the Youth Division of the Court of Québec under s. 91 para. 4 of the Youth Protection Act, which empowers the tribunal to order the correction of a situation where a child's rights have been encroached upon during social intervention.

The Court held that the tribunal's mandate is to render individualized and particularized justice based solely on the interests and rights of the child whose situation has been referred to it, and that preventive corrective measures are valid only if: the child is at risk of the encroachment recurring; the measure can effectively help prevent recurrence; and the measure is related to protecting the interests and rights of that specific child.

The Court further confirmed that the tribunal also holds a non-binding power of recommendation anchored in the text, scheme, and object of the YPA.

Since the young person had reached the age of majority and was no longer subject to social intervention, no corrective order was made.

The appellant was convicted of drug trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking after police, without a warrant, used an arrested drug dealer's seized cellphone to impersonate him and continue a text message conversation with the appellant, luring him to deliver heroin laced with fentanyl.

The majority of the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, holding that while the appellant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the text message conversation, the warrantless search was justified by exigent circumstances under s. 11(7) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act because the police faced an urgent situation calling for immediate action to prevent the imminent trafficking of fentanyl to protect public safety and it was impracticable to obtain a warrant.

Karakatsanis, Martin and Moreau JJ. dissented, finding no exigent circumstances and that the evidence should have been excluded under s. 24(2) of the Charter.

The appellants, pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors of opioid products, challenged the constitutional validity of s. 11 of British Columbia's Opioid Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, which authorizes British Columbia to act as representative plaintiff in a class action on behalf of all federal, provincial, and territorial governments in Canada unless they opt out.

The majority held that s. 11 is intra vires, characterizing its pith and substance as a procedural mechanism under s. 92(14) of the Constitution Act, 1867 (Administration of Justice in the Province) that facilitates intergovernmental cooperation without creating or altering substantive rights.

The majority further found that s. 11 maintains a meaningful connection to British Columbia and respects the legislative sovereignty of other governments.

Côté J. dissented, finding that the pith and substance of s. 11 engages and derogates from property and civil rights of extra-provincial governments under s. 92(13), that no meaningful connection exists, and that ss. 11(1)(b) and (2) should be severed as ultra vires.

Successive tripartite agreements were entered into by the governments of Canada and Quebec and an Indigenous band council to establish and maintain an Indigenous police force serving the First Nation's community.

Government funding proved inadequate to ensure the maintenance of the police force, resulting in accumulated operating deficits totalling $1,599,469.95 over four years.

The band council sought reimbursement on both a contractual basis under Quebec civil law (good faith under arts. 1375 and 1376 C.C.Q.) and a public law basis grounded in the honour of the Crown.

The Supreme Court of Canada (8-1) dismissed the appeal, finding that the provincial government's refusal to renegotiate funding upon renewal of the agreements constituted both a breach of good faith under Quebec civil law and a breach of the obligation to act consistently with the honour of the Crown.

The remedy was grounded in reconciliatory justice rather than corrective justice alone, and the provincial government was ordered to pay its share of the accumulated deficits ($767,745.58) as a measure to restore the honour of the Crown and place the parties back on the path to reconciliation.

The Crown appealed acquittals on trafficking in persons and receiving a material benefit from trafficking, where the trial judge had characterized evidence of the accused's regular violence and threats of violence toward the complainant as past discreditable conduct evidence, limiting its relevance to a mere contextual backdrop.

The Supreme Court majority held that this was an error of law because such violence, covered by the indictment's time period and locations, was directly relevant to the actus reus of trafficking under s. 279.01(1) of the Criminal Code — it could establish that the accused exercised control, direction, or influence over the complainant's movements, and could satisfy the definition of exploitation in s. 279.04.

The majority further held this error might have had a material bearing on the acquittals by undermining the trial judge's credibility assessment of the complainant.

The acquittals were set aside and a new trial ordered.

Côté and Rowe JJ. dissented, finding the error did not have a material bearing on the acquittals given the trial judge's detailed credibility findings and the absence of evidence linking the violence to the complainant's provision of sexual services.

The appellants, owners of coal-fired electric power generation facilities, challenged the vires of provincial linear property assessment guidelines that denied them additional depreciation on account of an off-coal agreement they had entered into with the Crown.

The appellants argued the guidelines violated the common law rule against administrative discrimination and were inconsistent with the purposes of the enabling statute.

The Court held that the reasonableness standard of review presumptively applies to vires challenges to subordinate legislation, as set out in the companion case.

The Court found the guidelines did discriminate against parties to off-coal agreements but that such discrimination was authorized by necessary implication under the broad ministerial power to establish valuation standards and regulations respecting specifications and characteristics of designated industrial property.

The appeal was dismissed, the guidelines being intra vires and consistent with the statutory purposes of ensuring current, correct, fair and equitable assessments.

The appellant challenged the vires of the Federal Child Support Guidelines, enacted by the Governor in Council under the Divorce Act, arguing that the GIC exceeded its authority because the Guidelines require the payer parent to bear a greater share of child-related costs than the recipient parent.

The Supreme Court held that the reasonableness standard under the Vavilov framework presumptively applies when reviewing the vires of subordinate legislation, and that the 'irrelevant, extraneous or completely unrelated' threshold from Katz Group is no longer good law.

Applying reasonableness review, the Court concluded that the Child Support Guidelines fall within the GIC's extremely broad statutory authority under s. 26.1 of the Divorce Act and are therefore intra vires.

The appeal was dismissed with costs.

The Crown appealed from the Quebec Court of Appeal's decision remitting the respondents' files to the Court of Québec for preliminary inquiries.

The respondents were each charged with historical sexual offences against a child which carried a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment at the time of commission, but for which the maximum was later increased to 14 years.

Before charges were laid, each respondent appeared in court and reserved their election as to mode of trial; neither requested a preliminary inquiry until after the 2019 amendment to s. 535 of the Criminal Code came into force, restricting preliminary inquiries to accused persons charged with offences punishable by 14 years or more.

A five-judge majority dismissed the appeal, albeit by different routes: Côté and Rowe JJ. held the right vested at the time charges were laid; Kasirer J. (Jamal J. concurring) held the right vested when the accused reserved their election as to mode of trial with the court's approval; and Martin J. held the date of the offence governs temporal application.

The four-judge dissent (Karakatsanis J., Wagner C.J., O'Bonsawin and Moreau JJ.) would have allowed the appeal, concluding the right vests only when a request for a preliminary inquiry is made, and that the new rule applies where no such request was made before it came into force.

On the interpretive question, Côté and Rowe JJ. held that the 14-year threshold in the new s. 535 is tied to the seriousness of the offence and not to the accused's personal maximum jeopardy, while Karakatsanis J. and Martin J. held the accused must personally face a maximum of 14 years.

The appellant was convicted of criminal negligence causing death and criminal negligence causing bodily harm following a head-on collision.

The sentencing judge imposed discretionary driving prohibition orders under s. 320.24(4) of the Criminal Code.

The central issue was whether s. 320.24(4), enacted by Bill C-46, authorizes a driving prohibition upon conviction for criminal negligence offences (ss. 220 and 221), which are not enumerated in that provision.

The majority held that driving prohibitions imposed were unlawful because the criminal negligence offences are not enumerated in s. 320.24(4), the included offence machinery does not extend to imply punishments, and Parliament's deliberate textual evolution of the provision supports exclusion of general criminal negligence offences.

Four judges dissented, holding that a finding of guilt for a principal offence necessarily entails findings of guilt for all lesser included offences and that the exclusion produces an absurd result.

The Crown appealed a Court of Appeal decision that excluded a firearm from evidence and entered an acquittal on firearms offences.

The firearm had been discovered during a search incident to arrest for possession of stolen property.

The trial judge found Charter breaches under ss. 8 and 9 but declined to exclude the evidence, holding that police would have had reasonable suspicion to ground a lawful investigative detention and that discoverability mitigated the seriousness of the breaches.

The majority of the Court of Appeal found the trial judge erred in her reasonable suspicion analysis and conducted a fresh s. 24(2) analysis excluding the firearm.

The Supreme Court majority allowed the appeal substantially for the reasons of the dissenting Court of Appeal judge, restoring the conviction.

Moreau J. dissented, agreeing with the Court of Appeal majority that there was no clear nexus between the accused and the possession of stolen property and that the firearm would not have been discoverable absent a lawful detention.

The appellant investors, who participated in a Ponzi scheme operated by a one-person corporation, sought to have the trustee in bankruptcy's unjust enrichment claims statute-barred under Ontario's Limitations Act, 2002 by attributing the directing mind's knowledge of illegal interest and commission payments to the corporation.

The majority held that the corporate attribution doctrine applies to one-person corporations on the same purposive, contextual, and pragmatic basis as to other corporations, and that courts retain discretion to decline attribution when it would undermine the purposes of the laws engaged — here, the limitations and bankruptcy regimes.

In concurrence, a separate judge held that resort to the common law corporate attribution doctrine was unnecessary because the codified agency rules in s. 12 of the Limitations Act, 2002 provided a complete answer, and that the claims were not discoverable until the trustee was authorized by the court to bring them.

All judges agreed that the investors were disentitled from equitable set-off for lack of clean hands, that the referral agreements were illegal contracts at common law, and that one appellant was not dealing at arm's length with the corporation.

The appellants, including the directing mind of two family-owned construction companies, participated in a false invoicing scheme that drained tens of millions of dollars from the debtor companies prior to insolvency.

The trustee in bankruptcy and monitor applied under s. 96(1)(b)(ii)(B) of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to recover the false invoice payments as transfers at undervalue on the basis that the debtor companies intended to defraud, defeat, or delay creditors.

The Supreme Court held that insolvency is not a prerequisite to establishing fraudulent intent under s. 96(1)(b)(ii)(B), and that the directing mind's fraudulent intent was properly attributed to the debtor corporations.

The Court confirmed that the corporate attribution doctrine must be applied purposively, contextually, and pragmatically, and that the fraud and no benefit exceptions to corporate attribution do not apply in the context of s. 96 of the BIA because applying them would undermine the creditor protection purpose of that provision.

Appeal dismissed.

Air carriers challenged federal regulations providing standardized compensation to passengers for flight delays, cancellations, denial of boarding, and lost or damaged baggage, arguing the regulations conflicted with the exclusivity principle in Article 29 of the Montreal Convention as implemented by the Carriage by Air Act and were therefore ultra vires the Canadian Transportation Agency's regulation-making authority under the Canada Transportation Act.

The Supreme Court held that the exclusivity principle applies only to 'actions for damages' that share the characteristics of judicial proceedings seeking individualized compensation tied to injury caused by another.

Because the impugned regulations create a consumer protection scheme providing standardized statutory entitlements irrespective of harm actually suffered, they do not constitute 'actions for damages' and do not fall within Article 29's scope.

The Court also clarified that the Mohan framework governs admissibility of expert evidence on questions of international law.

Appeal dismissed.

The appellant was convicted of assault with a weapon, using an imitation firearm in the commission of an assault, and uttering threats following an incident at a school.

The Crown adduced an out-of-court written statement of a Crown witness who claimed at trial to have no recollection of the events, seeking to admit it under the principled exception to the hearsay rule.

The majority of the Supreme Court held that the trial judge erred in finding threshold reliability established: the search results confirming the location of the pistols lacked a logical connection to the accused's degree of involvement and thus could not corroborate that material aspect of the statement, and the circumstances surrounding the statement — including the accomplice's potential motive to shift blame — did not overcome the specific hearsay dangers.

The majority further held that the Court of Appeal erred in relying on the complainant's trial testimony, not tendered in the voir dire, to establish threshold reliability; the appropriate mechanism on appeal was the curative proviso, which could not apply on the facts.

The convictions were quashed and a new trial ordered.

The appellants, undischarged bankrupts, sought to have administrative penalties and disgorgement orders imposed by the British Columbia Securities Commission released upon bankruptcy discharge.

The Commission had sanctioned the appellants for market manipulation contrary to the Securities Act, ordering $13.5 million in administrative penalties and approximately $5.6 million in disgorgement orders.

The majority held that neither the administrative penalties nor the disgorgement orders fall within s. 178(1)(a) of the BIA because orders of an administrative tribunal registered with a court are not 'imposed by a court' within the meaning of that provision.

As to s. 178(1)(e), the majority held that administrative penalties do not result directly from the fraudulent scheme and therefore are dischargeable, but the disgorgement orders — representing the exact value of property obtained by fraud — are directly linked to the fraudulent misrepresentation and survive bankruptcy.

The dissent would have held that both orders survive under s. 178(1)(e) as debts resulting directly from deceitful conduct, without requiring a correspondence between the debt quantum and the gain derived.

Ontario appealed from the Court of Appeal's decision concerning the Robinson Treaties of 1850, which contained an Augmentation Clause providing for periodic increases to annual payments to the Anishinaabe of Lake Huron and Lake Superior contingent on economic conditions.

The annuities had been frozen at $4 per person since 1875.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that treaty interpretation is reviewable on a correctness standard, and adopted the fourth interpretation of the Augmentation Clause: the annuity is a single payment to the 'Chiefs and their Tribes', with mandatory increases to $4 per person where economic conditions permit, and discretionary increases beyond $4.

The Crown's discretion is not unfettered; it must be exercised diligently, honourably, liberally, and justly, consistently with the honour of the Crown.

No specific fiduciary duties arose in respect of the Augmentation Clause, but the duty of diligent implementation did.

The breach of treaty claims were not statute-barred.

The appeals were allowed in part, cross-appeals dismissed, and a declaration issued directing the Crown to engage in time-bound negotiations with the Superior plaintiffs regarding compensation for past breaches.

The respondent sought Charter damages under s. 24(1) against the Crown after Parliament enacted transitional provisions that retroactively rendered him permanently ineligible for a criminal record suspension, in violation of ss. 11(h) and (i) of the Charter.

The Crown moved to strike the claim, asserting absolute immunity for the enactment of legislation.

The majority (Wagner C.J. and Karakatsanis J., Martin, O'Bonsawin and Moreau JJ. concurring) held that the state enjoys only a limited immunity — not absolute immunity — for the enactment of unconstitutional legislation, affirming the threshold in Mackin v. New Brunswick (Minister of Finance), 2002 SCC 13: Charter damages are available if the legislation was clearly unconstitutional, in bad faith, or an abuse of power.

Jamal J. (Kasirer J. concurring) dissented in part, accepting the clearly unconstitutional standard but rejecting bad faith and abuse of power as grounds, and answering the first question in the negative on the basis of parliamentary privilege.

Rowe J. (Côté J. concurring) dissented in full, holding that parliamentary privilege requires absolute immunity for the preparation, drafting, and enactment of legislation.

The appeal was dismissed with costs.

The appellant, a telecommunications company, filed GST returns claiming substantial tax refunds under the Excise Tax Act.

Following an audit, the Minister issued assessments disallowing input tax credits and imposing gross negligence penalties.

Rather than appealing to the Tax Court of Canada, the appellant brought an application for judicial review in Federal Court seeking declarations that the assessments breached procedural fairness, lacked an evidentiary foundation, and were issued for an improper purpose.

The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously dismissed the appeal, holding that the application was bereft of any possibility of success: the first two claims were properly within the Tax Court's exclusive jurisdiction as attacks on the correctness of assessments, the improper purpose claim was unsupported by any pleaded facts, and all three declarations sought would have had no practical effect given the absence of a live controversy apart from the correctness of the assessments.