News
Older Updates
Happy 2018, everyone! Thanks too to those who have provided feedback and support.
Supreme Court of Canada releases R v Marakah, 2017 SCC 59 (CanLII) extending privacy rights to communications when found on a recipient's electronic device.
Search results now sourced by Google, making for much easier access to relevant articles.
Senate Releases their report, "Justice Delayed is Justice Denied" on court delays in criminal matters.
The comment function in the "Discussion" tab of each article is now available for reporting errors. Unrelated postings will be deleted.
Supreme Court of Canada releases court case statistics from 2006 to 2016. Over that period of time 41% of appeals heard were criminal cases.
Statistics Canada udpates national criminal case statistics. It includes information such as the frequency of convictions, frequency of penalties, and length of time to complete cases.
Happy 2017! This website is now averaging about 34,000 pageviews a month. An impressive increase from previous years.
The Supreme Court releases R v Jordan, 2016 SCC 27 (CanLII), that created a new framework for calculating whether an accused's matter was brought to court in a timely manner.
The Supreme Court releases R v Lloyd, 2016 SCC 13 (CanLII), which rules that some mandatory minimum penalties for drug trafficking under s. 5(3) of the CDSA are unconstitutional. R v Safarzadeh-Markhali, 2016 SCC 14 (CanLII) is also released, which rules that s. 719(3.1) restricting enhanced credit for pre-trial custody is unconstitutional.
This website was migrated to a new service provider with increased user performance.
The Victims Bill of Rights and related Acts (Bill C-32) comes into force. It creates greater entitlements to victims to participate and be informed of criminal proceedings. As well it amends several parts of the Criminal Code relating to victims.
The Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act (Bill C-26) comes into force. The Act increases mandatory minimums on sex offences involving children and creates a public database of child sex offenders under the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act. Additionally, Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act comes into force, criminalizing certain exploitative practices relating to children.
The Supreme Court releases R v Nur, 2015 SCC 15 (CanLII), which rules that certain mandatory minimum penalties under s. 91(2) are unconstitutional.
The Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act (Bill C-13) comes into force. The Act creates the offence of Distribution of Intimate Images, refurbishes other telecommunication offences, and redrafts the provisions relating to the production orders and accessing digital records.
The Supreme Court in R v Fearon, 2014 SCC 77 (CanLII) affirms a common law police power to perform limited searches of cellphones incident to arrest without a warrant.
Criminal Code amendments removing procuring offences (s. 212), creating Commodification of Sexual Services (s. 286.1-4), and other related amendments in response to Canada v Bedford, 2013 SCC 72 (CanLII) are now in force.
The Supreme Court in R v Hart, 2014 SCC 52 (CanLII) limits the use of confessions arising from "Mr. Big" undercover operations by ruling them presumptively inadmissible.
The Supreme Court in R v Spencer, 2014 SCC 43 (CanLII), states that subscriber information held by Internet Service Providers are subject to an expectation of privacy and can only be obtained by police through a production order.
The trilogy of cases of R v Clarke, 2014 SCC 28 (CanLII), R v Carvery, 2014 SCC 27 (CanLII), and R v Summers, 2014 SCC 26 (CanLII) are released by the Supreme Court of Canada, affirming that the loss of remission in remand will justify 1.5:1 credit at sentencing.
The SCC releases the decision of Bedford v Canada, 2013 SCC 72 (CanLII) striking down ss. 213(1)(c), 212(1)(j), and 210 of the Criminal Code.
The Increasing Offenders’ Accountability for Victims Act comes into force requiring victim fine surcharges for all convictions. The fines would be 30% of any fine order, or at least $100 or $200 depending on election.
The Citizen's Arrest and Self-Defence Act comes into force. This re-writes the self-defence provisions under s. 34 to 42 as well as the citizen's arrest provision under s. 494.
A divided Supreme Court in R v TELUS Communications Co., 2013 SCC 16 (CanLII), [2013] 2 SCR 3 finds that an anticipatory search warrant to seize prospective text messages stored by a service provider amounts to a Part VI wiretap.
The remaining parts of the Safe Streets and Communities Act comes into force, most notably the removal of a number of offences from eligibility for a conditional sentence.
The Safe Streets and Communities Act provisions regarding penalties for sexual offences against children come into force.