In R v Sharma, 2022 SCC 29 [“Sharma”], the Supreme Court of Canada [“SCC”/”the Court"] upheld the constitutionality of provisions that restricted the availability of conditional sentences. This decision marks a break from the SCC’s recent trend of overturning amendments to the Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46 [“Code”] made during the Harper era. Conditional […]
How should criminal courts account for the existence of systemic and pervasive anti-Black racism when sentencing Black offenders? This is the question that the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal (“NSCA”) grappled with in R v Anderson, 2021 NSCA 62 [Anderson]. More specifically, the appellate court examined how evidence from ‘Impact of Race and Culture Assessments’ […]
In July 2020, the Ontario Court of Appeal ("ONCA") ruled that two provisions of the Criminal Code are unconstitutional, ultimately making conditional sentences available to more offenders. In particular, the ONCA ruled that s.742.1(c) and s.742.1(e)(ii) of the Code violated Cheyenne Sharma’s section 15 right to equality on the basis of race and section 7 […]
In Tran v Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) 2017 SCC 50 [Tran], the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) applied principles of statutory interpretation to answer two questions: First, does a ‘term of imprisonment’ under section 36(1)(a) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2011, c 27 [IRPA] include conditional sentences? Second, is the […]