Robson Crim Legal Blog

Rehabilitation is an important objective for sentences that Canadian criminal courts place on offenders. Jurisprudence first recognized that incarcerating offenders does not effectively rehabilitate them in the case R. v. Proulx. However, legal scholarship indicates that restorative principles have been restrained in recent years.

A primary principle of Canadian law is the principle of stare decisis. An implication of stare decisis is that it ensures that there is consistency in the law; however, it also means that there is limited to no room for consideration of an offender and their circumstances in the application of the law. The fundamental purpose of sentencing as outlined in s. 718 of the Criminal Code is to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful, and safe society.

On June 9, 2021, the Manitoba Court of Appeal heard the appeal of Marlon Elijah Whincup. The issue before the court was one of mathematics. Whincup had been serving an imprisonment of 30 months for an incident in which he stole an ambulance in a methamphetamine-induced psychosis. The sentencing judge made an error resulting in a 30 month sentence instead of the intended 24. The Court confirmed that the sentencing judge had correctly considered Gladue factors.

In this blog entry, I will describe the recent case of R v CEB. I will also discuss why I believe that Gladue factors were correctly balanced against the harsher sentencing standards typically applied to cases dealing with child sexual abuse.

Sentencing within the realm of criminal law can be a tricky continuum of complex considerations and difficult balancing. Starting points, which are set guidelines for sentencing relative to a certain offence, are meant to ease the complexity of the judge’s job by reducing idiosyncrasies and providing them with a marker from which to start their sentencing analysis.