The Ontario Court of Justice held a Part III trial under the Provincial Offences Act in absentia for Noel-George Carr regarding three informations under the Building Code Act (BCA).
The court quashed all three informations as statute barred, finding that the doctrine of discoverability had been incorporated into the BCA, rendering the continuing offence doctrine irrelevant for limitation periods.
The court ruled that only s.14(1) of the BCA is a continuing offence, not s.8(1) or s.12(2), and that failure to issue a stop work order does not convert these offences into continuing offences.
The informations were laid well outside the one-year limitation period based on discovery dates.
