Canadian judges have demonstrated very little awareness over the heightened risks of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation that should prompt judges to attend comprehensive legal training over what the United Nations has described as the “shadow pandemic,” according to human rights and legal aid experts.
A Quebec man accused of tax evasion by provincial tax authorities won an “important” legal battle after the Court of Quebec applied the landmark Jordan ruling and ordered a stay of proceedings and charges.
Following in the footsteps of British Columbia and Ontario, a Federal Court judge declared retroactive record suspension eligibility requirements to be unconstitutional, opening the door to thousands of offenders across the country to be eligible for a pardon.
A Court of Quebec judge declared the minimum mandatory sentence of four years imprisonment for discharging a firearm while being reckless to the life or safety of another person as unconstitutional for an Aboriginal offender.
A Quebecer who was found guilty of criminal negligence causing the death of a passenger in a speed boat he was operating lost his bid to overturn his conviction.
A new bill introduced by the Quebec government that seeks to modernize the province’s penal justice system hands peace officers new discretionary powers to the consternation of criminal lawyers and Quebec’s legal society.
A former Canadian Armed Forces soldier found guilty of constructive first-degree murder who argued that the verdict was unreasonable and that the trial judge erred by dismissing his motion for a directed verdict of acquittal lost his case before the Quebec Court of Appeal.
A Montreal man who was found guilty of manslaughter for killing his ailing wife in what he argued was a compassionate killing was denied parole even though he has served a sixth of his two-year sentence, minus a day.
Two days after the federal government proposed to make it tougher for asylum seekers from making refugee claims in Canada, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned a 45-day prison sentence issued against a Colombian mother and son who pleaded guilty to unlawful entry into Canada.
The Quebec Court of Appeal ordered a new trial for a Quebec man convicted of second degree murder after it held that an out-of-court statement he made was involuntary, evidence yielded by a Mr. Big kind of operation was inadmissible and the trial judge should have given more detailed instructions to the jury.
Sexual assault convictions do not, in itself, justify the dismissal of an employee because of constitutional protections against discrimination based on criminal records, held two recent but separate decisions by the Quebec administrative labour tribunal.