Reading Time: 3 minutes How the Ontario Court of Appeal’s recent decision affects driveway stops by police. A lot of accused individuals call lawyers, outraged, saying they were driving perfectly yet a cop pulled them over. But what many do not know until a lawyer breaks the news to them is this: the Ontario Highway Traffic Act allows officers […]
Contact in Sports: Acceptable or criminal assault?
Reading Time: 4 minutes By voluntarily taking part in an activity, individuals implicitly consent to interactions with others that would otherwise be criminal assaults. A visitor to Earth would probably notice something odd about some of our favourite pastimes. Societies around the world consider some behaviour – of one citizen against another – to be criminal and deserving of […]
FAMOUS CASES | Criminal Sentencing of Aboriginal Offenders: Ipeelee
Reading Time: 5 minutes In Ipeelee, the Supreme Court of Canada again considered the Gladue Principles. Over a decade has passed since this Court issued its judgment in Gladue. As the statistics indicate, s. 718.2(e) of the Criminal Code has not had a discernible impact on the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system … The failure […]
CRIMINAL | Evidence That Rape Myths Still Prevalent in Court in 2021
Reading Time: 4 minutes Despite a social-conscious awakening, one trial proves archaic rape myths still exist. A much-needed push against old-think myths and stereotypes of sexual assault victims led to a revamp of the Criminal Code. The changes updated when and how prior sexual activity of a complainant can be used in court. It took many generations and a […]
FAMOUS CASES | Criminal Sentencing of Aboriginal Offenders: Gladue
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the Gladue case, the Supreme Court of Canada considered Aboriginal sentencing provisions in the Criminal Code. … the jail term for an aboriginal offender may in some circumstances be less than the term imposed on a non aboriginal offender for the same offence. R v Gladue, [1999] 1 SCR 688 (SCC) at para 93 […]
CRIMINAL | The State is in Your Home: Courts punish poor parenting
Reading Time: 4 minutes In the middle of a pandemic, are our children really safe? Two Ontario courts recently punished poor parenting: the Ontario Superior Court in R v CO et al and the Ontario Court of Appeal in R v Lis. Both of these decisions were released during the pandemic and after the Crown had appealed the prior […]
Comparing Canada’s Corrections to Europe, the United States and Aboriginal Communities
Reading Time: 6 minutes How a society responds to and deals with its members who break or fail to follow its most basic rules is often rooted in its history and cultural values. Canada’s background is intimately tied to British traditions and practices in light of our history as a colony from the 1760’s up to the 20th century. […]
What You Didn’t Know was a Crime in Canada
Reading Time: 4 minutes The Government of Canada recently gave the Criminal Code a legal face lift after conducting a detailed review to eliminate all the excess and outdated (err, weird) laws. But there still remains some interesting, unique and lesser known criminal offences.
The Many Faces of ‘Corrections’: A call for universal reform
Reading Time: 6 minutes It is perhaps time (if not long overdue) to re-evaluate what we mean by justice and corrections. In my study of our court and prison methods, I found… a great wastage of human lives – a failure to reclaim and utilize them. E.N. Foss, 1914 Perhaps the least understood part of our criminal justice system […]
How Inmates in Canadian Prisons Suffer
Reading Time: 8 minutes Mental health crises for which there are few resources COVID-19 lockdowns Overuse of solitary confinement A racialized justice system that criminalizes Indigenous Peoples and Black Canadians A lack of preparation for re-entry into society These are the tip-of-the-iceberg issues faced by inmates in Canada’s federal and provincial prisons. And according to advocates for better inmate […]
