B.C. seeks ban on public drug use, dialing back decriminalization
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Supreme Court of Canada has rejected appeals from four men convicted of child sex offences, all of whom cited police entrapment as grounds to dismiss their cases.
Temitope Dare, Erhard Haniffa, Muhammad Jaffer and Cory Ramelson were among more than 100 individuals arrested by the York Regional Police in 2017, as part of a multi-year investigation into child sex trafficking.
The investigation, titled "Project Raphael," began in 2014 and targeted individuals searching online to have sex with children. Undercover police officers posed as sex workers on backpage.com and, after agreeing to provide sexual services, revealed themselves to be underage. The investigation was the first of its kind in Ontario.
In order for an investigation to be considered bona fide, the police must demonstrate they had “reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was occurring in space defined with sufficient precision.”
Ramelson argued he was induced to commit a crime by the police and the “bait and switch” of announcing the age late in the interaction raised “clear entrapment concerns.” Ramelson also argued the website was too broad a space to support reasonable suspicion.
“Some of the most pernicious crimes are the hardest to investigate,” said Justice Andromache Karakatsanis of the Supreme Court of Canada Thursday. “To draw those crimes into the open, the police, acting undercover, sometimes create occasions for people to commit the very crimes they seek to prevent. Done properly, such techniques may cast new light on covert offending, unveiling harms that would otherwise go unpunished.”
Privacy concerns were also acknowledged in the ruling, with consideration of the need to protect privacy interests from state overreach, but balancing that with “the state’s legitimate interest in investigating and prosecuting crime.”
All four men appealed their cases to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2021, and to the Supreme Court of Canada in spring of 2022. Thursday's judgment to reject the appeals was unanimous by all nine judges.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
An orca whale calf that has been stranded in a B.C. lagoon for weeks after her pregnant mother died swam out on her own early Friday morning.
Donald Trump's defence team attacked the credibility Friday of the prosecution's first witness in his hush money case, seeking to discredit testimony detailing a scheme between Trump and a tabloid to bury negative stories to protect the Republican's 2016 presidential campaign.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
An Ontario man who took out a loan to pay for auto repairs said his car was repossessed after he missed two payments.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
The Canadian Transportation Agency has hit a record high of more than 71,000 complaints in a backlog. The quasi-judicial regulator and tribunal tasked with settling disputes between customers and the airlines says the backlog is growing because the number of incoming complaints keeps increasing.
An American Airlines flight attendant was indicted Thursday after authorities said he tried to secretly record video of a 14-year-old girl using an airplane bathroom last September.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.