Criminal
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September 05, 2025
EVIDENCE - Admissibility - Voir dire - Hearsay rule - Exceptions
Appeal by KR from trial judge’s decision to admit an out-of-court statement as evidence under the principled exception to the hearsay rule based on its procedural reliability only. KR was found guilty of second-degree murder. His conviction depended on the admission of the videorecorded statement of 13-year-old ET, who was interviewed by a police officer as a suspect in the same murder.
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September 05, 2025
New non-profit targets bias, quick-conviction mindset that leads to wrongful convictions
Canada’s justice system has a problem it prefers not to talk about: wrongful convictions. They are not rare accidents. They are predictable failures — born of tunnel vision, systemic bias and a culture that prizes quick convictions over careful truth-seeking. Each wrongful conviction is not just a legal error; it is a moral catastrophe that destroys lives and undermines faith in the courts.
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September 04, 2025
Calgary lawyer disbarred for spying on judge; civil liberties group cries foul
A national civil liberties group is accusing Alberta’s law society of using “a vindictive and petty abuse of process” to disbar the group’s president, who landed in hot water for hiring a private investigator to spy on a senior judge in another province.
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September 04, 2025
Canada cuts its Russian oil price cap to reduce funds for Russia’s war on Ukraine
Ottawa’s reduction of the price cap it imposes on seaborne Russian-origin crude oil recently came into force, as part of coordinated efforts by Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom to impede the financing of Russia’s illegal all-out war against Ukraine.
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September 04, 2025
Psychedelic disconnect: Charter rights and the case for transparency
A recent Federal Court of Appeal decision (Toth v. Canada (Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health), 2025 FCA 119) about medical psilocybin use exemptions provides some interesting analysis on s. 7 Charter rights and significant policy shifts under the Vavilov framework (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65).
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September 04, 2025
Alberta Court of Appeal finds no reviewable error in Calgary murder decision
It was Calgary’s first murder of 2019. On Jan. 9, police charged 36-year-old Vincent Fong with the second-degree murder of his father, Shu Kwan (Ken) Fong, after a body was found in a northwest Calgary home. Fong was charged with second-degree murder.
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September 03, 2025
Legal experts & advocates push PM Carney for urgent action to secure Canada’s ‘digital sovereignty’
Legal experts, advocacy organizations and prominent Canadians are asking Ottawa to urgently legislate and implement measures to counter the digital risks to Canada’s autonomy and democracy posed by artificial intelligence (AI), foreign interference and U.S. tech giants’ dominance of domestic digital infrastructure.
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September 03, 2025
Crown unable to prove beyond reasonable doubt officer acted unlawfully
Off-duty Belleville police constable Paul Fyke was shopping at Lowe’s when he overheard staff discussing concerns about a group of three shoppers suspected of shoplifting. They observed a man in a white hat stealing an energy drink. Const. Fyke identified himself as a police officer and offered assistance.
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September 03, 2025
Geneviève Lamontagne appointed as judge of the Court of Quebec
Quebec Minister of Justice Simon Jolin-Barrette has announced the appointment of Geneviève Lamontagne as a judge of the Court of Quebec.
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September 03, 2025
SENTENCING - Aggravated assault - Mitigating factors - Aboriginal offenders – Gladue report
Leave to appeal by Izzard from sentence. Izzard, who has roots in both Indigenous and Black marginalized communities, was convicted, on a guilty plea, of aggravated assault and four other offences.