ONCA
SCC Grants Leave to Appeal for Sealing Order in Sherman Estate
The Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) recently granted leave to appeal in the Sherman Estate’s legal battle to keep its probate application private. The appeal will provide the court with an opportunity to revisit the stringent legal test for sealing orders, an issue that has gone largely undiscussed for nearly two decades. Sealing orders, which […]
Breach of the Peace: ONCA Addresses Police Power to Arrest in Fleming v Ontario
Tensions can run high during political demonstrations, and police are often deployed to monitor the situation and prevent an escalating conflict. In doing so, police have a common law power to arrest individuals when they believe an arrest may prevent a breach of the peace without the requirement that police believe that the person being […]
Bad Blood? R v Culotta Addresses Admissibility of Admissibility of Blood Samples Obtained by Health Care Professionals
Introduction Often, the Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC") issues reasons for their decisions without writing a lengthy judgment of its own. It is easy to overlook these cases as unimportant and inconsequential, as the SCC itself simply adopted the decision of a lower court. The recent case R v Culotta, 2019 SCC 33 [R v […]
R v Reeves: Shared Computer? Don’t Fret—Your Secrets are Safe
People share things. They share rooms, apartments, and wi-fi passwords. They share socks, Netflix accounts, and leftovers. But what does this sharing entail, exactly? As a shared owner, what rights do you actually have? Does shared ownership allow one to unilaterally decide what happens to the shared object or thing? In R v Reeves, 2018 […]
R v Jackson: A New Standard for Social Context in Sentencing Law
This guest post was contributed by third-year Osgoode Hall Law School student Jamie Shilton (JD, Class of 2019). No serious assessment of the Canadian criminal justice system would be complete without an observation that its normal, everyday functioning incarcerates vast and disproportionate numbers of Black and Indigenous peoples. In a recent article, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah and […]
R v Reeves: The Impact of Joint-Residence on One’s Reasonable Expectation of Privacy
On May 5th 2017, the Ontario Court of Appeal released its decision in R v Reeves, 2017 ONCA 365 [Reeves], which deals with issues relating to the search and seizure of a computer from a jointly-owned home. The judgment also considers the admissibility of evidence (child pornography, in this case) obtained in violation of an […]
Return to Sender: Reasonable Expectations of Privacy in R v Marakah
How private are your private messages? Can the police read the texts you send to others? This post explores R v Marakah, 2017 SCC 59, in which the Supreme Court of Canada found that a sender can have a reasonable expectation of privacy over messages retrieved from the phone of the person receiving those messages. The […]
R v Jarvis : Schooling Privacy
NOTE: there is a publication ban in this case, pursuant to section 486.4 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits the dissemination of information that may identify the witnesses. This post is intended to comply with the restriction so that it may be published. In R v Jarvis, 2017 ONCA 778 [Jarvis] the Ontario Court Appeal found […]
Doctors and Discipline: Deference to the Penalty Decision in College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario v Peirovy
On January 17, 2017, the Divisional Court at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled on College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario v Peirovy, 2017 ONSC 136 [Peirovy], creating questions about the degree of deference courts should afford to disciplinary committees in self-governing professions. Peirovy has since been granted to leave to the Ontario […]