The applicants, Michael Wong and Michael Singh, brought an application under section 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, seeking a stay of proceedings due to unreasonable delay in their criminal trial for drug production and trafficking.
The court applied the new framework established in R. v. Jordan, calculating the total delay from the date charged to the anticipated end of trial, subtracting defence-attributable delay.
The total delay for Mr. Wong was 29 months and for Mr. Singh was 28 months and three weeks, both falling below the 30-month presumptive ceiling for Superior Court cases.
The court also considered potential exceptional circumstances, such as jurisdictional issues and the striking of guilty pleas due to a misapprehension about conditional sentences, but ultimately found no breach of section 11(b) and dismissed the applications.
