Robson Crim Legal Blog

Understanding how a society responds to a breach of an individual’s rights gives profound insight to how that society regards the rights of all individuals. Determining a breach of an individual’s section 8 rights is clearly denoted as a balancing act between the privacy interests of the individual and the needs of the state; the balance of these factors, as it sits at present, gives little significance to the breach of a section 8 right alone.

The majority opinion in R v Kirkpatrick 2022 SCC 33 addressed the state of the law on consent and condom use. The majority distinguished the decision in R v Hutchinson 2014 SCC 19 and held that vaginal intercourse with a condom constitutes the “specific physical sex act” for the purposes of assessing voluntary agreement to sexual activity under s 273.1(1) of the Criminal Code (“Code). As a result, where intercourse is contingent upon condom use, the lack of contraception is n

For what seems to be a painfully simple concept, there seems to be a substantial amount of societal confusion around the issue of consent as it pertains to the sexual interactions between human beings. Realistically though, how could we expect any different from the public in Canada if our Supreme Court was still clarifying the legal test required to define capacity to give consent as recently as May 2021?

The case of Ontario (Attorney General) v. Clark (“Clark”) allowed the Supreme Court of Canada to address an important question that had yet to be discussed in current case law: can the police sue Crown prosecutors for how they conduct a case?[1] In a majority decision with eight Justices agreeing, the Court found that Crown prosecutors have immunity from claims brought by police officers during a criminal proceeding.

Is section 37(10) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) constitutional? The following blog will discuss the decision of R. v. C.P. as it relates to the constitutionality of section 37(10) of the YCJA.