Whether it was the chaos surrounding cuts to Toronto’s city council, the sentencing hearings for the Quebec City mosque shooter or the Trans Mountain pipeline project, there were plenty of fascinating court cases for Canadians to follow this year.
CTVNews.ca picked six of the most shocking, chaotic and newsworthy court cases from 2018 and broke them down with CTV News legal analyst Edward Prutschi.
Prutschi discussed what made the cases interesting, what surprised him about the decisions and where he sees some of them going from here.
Trans Mountain pipeline
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks about the House of Commons following Question Period Wednesday December 12, 2018 in Ottawa. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld)
The Trans Mountain pipeline has been a political hot potato for all levels of government, and it sparked rivalries between Alberta and British Columbia. But it was an August decision in the Federal Court of Appeal that really threw the development for a loop.
The appeals court tore up a federal approval of the pipeline, arguing the government did not adequately consult the affected Indigenous communities. Instead of appealing the decision to the Supreme Court, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government would engage in meaningful discussions with Indigenous leaders about the project.
“I think most people thought when it went to the Federal Court of Appeals as it did, that this was just going to be the last nail in the coffin…and (the pipeline) was actually going to happen and so an enormous legal wrench was thrown into that process,” Prutschi said.
Prutschi added he was surprised the Court of Appeals ruled the way it did.
“That’s not something, in my view, the law had said before,” he said. “I don’t know why the government would’ve been expected to be held to that kind of standard. It’s just an example of law evolving as time goes along.”
Prutschi said he believes the choice to engage in discussions rather than appeal to the Supreme Court is likely the faster of the two options, but leaves open a decision that would have likely been overturned.
The federal government now owns the pipeline project but the province of British Columbia, along with environmentalists and Indigenous leaders, are doing everything in their power to delay it. The implications of the Court of Appeals decision will continue into 2019.
Gerald Stanley murder trial
Gerald Stanley is pictured entering the Court of Queen's Bench for the fifth day of his trial in Battleford, Sask., Monday, Feb.5, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards
In a case that sparked outrage from Indigenous communities across the country, Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley was found not guilty in the 2016 shooting death of Colten Boushie.
Boushie, a 22-year-old Indigenous man, and four other young people drove onto Stanley’s property in August, 2016. During the trial back in February, Boushie’s friends said they were on the property to look for help with a flat tire, but Stanley claimed the group was trying to steal an ATV.
Stanley told the court he fired some warning shots in the air to scare the group away, but the handgun accidentally went off again when he tried to pull the alleged trespassers from the SUV. The shot struck Boushie, who was sitting in the passenger seat, in the back of head.
On Feb. 9, following a 13-day trial, the jury found Stanley not guilty of second-degree murder.
“It was a fairly straightforward self-defence argument,” Prutschi said. “Were it not for the media attention and the politicization and the tragedy behind it, it wouldn’t have been all that interesting a case for outside observers.”
In the days and weeks following the trial, Boushie’s family took their outrage as far as the United Nations, where they called for the organization to study the systemic racism in the Canadian legal system.
Boushie’s family had previously said their presentation was well-received and that several Indigenous leaders from around the world shared their personal stories of hardship with them.
The family was upset in part because the 12-person jury did not include a single visibly Indigenous person and have been calling for more Indigenous representation on juries involving cases with an Indigenous victim.
But Prutschi said doing that could cause more harm than good.
“You may be harming a whole bunch of Indigenous accused, who no longer have the tool in their arsenal to try and craft the jury that they think is going to be fair to them,” he said.
The Quebec City mosque shooting
Alexandre Bissonnette, a suspect in a shooting at a Quebec City mosque, arrives at the court house in Quebec City on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mathieu Belanger
The Quebec City mosque shooting in January 2017 remains one of the worst shootings in Canadian history. This year, Alexandre Bissonnette had to answer for the deaths of the six worshippers.
On March 26, Bissonnette pleaded not guilty to the six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder, but changed his mind two days later and admitted to the crimes.
Bissonnette is still awaiting sentencing, but could face 150 years behind bars. His defence team, however, is arguing against the legislation that allows for consecutive sentences in cases of multiple murders.
"It denies outright the possibility of humanity for a person," Charles-Olivier Gosselin, Bissonnette’s lawyer, told court back in June. "Without hope, what is the meaning of a life? There isn't any."
During a sentencing hearing in April, court heard Bissonnette had violent thoughts and came close to killing himself several times.
He originally planned to shoot people in a shopping mall, but then shifted his attention to the mosque because “he convinced himself that if there was at least one religious extremist inside," it would be worth it to murder them and save other lives, according to Marc-Andre Lamontagne, a psychological expert who testified at the trial.
Bissonnette is expected to be sentenced on Feb. 8.
Dellen Millard’s third murder conviction
Dellen Millard is seen in this court sketch, Monday, June 11, 2018.
In September, Dellen Millard was found guilty of killing his father Wayne, marking the third time he had been convicted of murder.
Wayne Millard, a wealthy businessman, was found dead in his bed in November, 2012 with a gunshot wound near his eye. While the death was originally ruled a suicide, investigators reopened the case when Millard was charged in the murders of Tim Bosma and Laura Babcock, for which Millard and his friend Mark Smitch were convicted.
“It’s pretty remarkable and from a chronological perspective, what’s most interesting is that this was actually the first,” said Prutschi. “This is a case that had been signed, sealed, delivered and closed and only because of subsequent investigations and subsequent information, did police say: ‘We need to take a second look at that.’”
During trial, prosecutors argued Millard killed his father out of frustration that a hefty inheritance was being used on an aviation business, but the defence argued the death was, in fact, a suicide.
On Dec. 18, Millard was sentenced to another 25 years in prison for his father’s murder. The conviction means he will not be eligible for parole until 2088.
This story made headlines nationwide for a variety of reasons, Prutschi says, including the publicity surrounding the other two homicides and the family’s wealth.
“Serial killers are always perversely interesting,” he said. “It’s the kind of legal trainwreck that we can’t help ourselves from staring at.”
John Tory vs. Doug Ford
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to the media during a press conference after visiting the new Amazon office in downtown Toronto on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Following Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s election in June, one of his first moves was to cut Toronto council from 47 members to 25, prompting a hectic couple of months of legal action as the clock ticked on a municipal election.
Toronto council voted to submit a legal challenge against Ford’s Better Local Government Act just six days after it became law. A month later, Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba struck down the legislation, citing a freedom of expression violation.
On appeal, with a notwithstanding clause as a backup, the Ontario government was granted a stay and was allowed to cut Toronto’s city council.
Prutschi said Belobaba’s ruling was surprising, and the appeal was what many legal experts expected.
“I thought any trial court would’ve said: ‘Like or hate it, it’s something (Ford is) allowed to do,’” he said in a recent phone interview. “Ultimately that’s what the Court of Appeals seems to have said, but there was that brief moment where those who wanted to oppose Ford’s agenda were very, very happy.”
Toronto elected its new 25-member council on Oct. 22.
“Now we get to watch to see if a slimmed-down council is or isn’t a good idea, but I think we know definitively legally speaking… it’s the province’s idea to make,” Prutschi said.
Rohinie Bisesar not criminally responsible in stabbing
Rohinie Bisesar (left) and Rosemarie Junor (right). Bisesar was found not criminally responsible in Junor's 2015 stabbing death by a judge on Nov. 6, 2018.
In November, Rohinie Bisesar was found not criminally responsible for a 2015 deadly stabbing of a stranger in a downtown drug store, due to a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon ruled the overwhelming evidence of Bisesar’s mental illness contributed to the killing of Rosemarie Junor in a Shoppers Drug Mart in December, 2015.
Surveillance video caught the 54-second incident in which Bisesar is seen entering the Shoppers Drug Mart and stabbing Junor in the back near a makeup counter and leaving the knife behind. Junor died in hospital several days later.
A forensic psychiatrist told the court that Bisesar was going through a psychiatric breakdown due to untreated schizophrenia at the time of the attack.
“For those who followed the court proceeding time after time, it was fairly clear that this was a person who had really started to come unravelled,” said Prutschi.
“The fitness assessment was over very, very fast and the actual trial itself was almost pro forma, done within a day.”
Bisesar will remain in a secure women’s forensic unit until the Ontario Review Board decides how she will be detained and rehabilitated.
“This is a person who has the potential to get better fairly quickly and be in a position where she might be released in a fairly early stage,” said Prutschi.
