The Justice Files

Two Quebec municipal court judges could be removed from the bench after a judicial inquiry found they illegally authorized 1,669 imprisonment warrants against people who failed to pay fines.

In an unusually severe report, an inquiry committee of Quebec’s Conseil de la magistrature recommended the removal of Gatineau municipal court judges Martin Gosselin and Joanne Cousineau, concluding their conduct caused irreparable damage to public confidence in the judiciary.

The warrants were issued between June 2020 and December 2022 and affected 1,126 people, including vulnerable and homeless defendants.

A former informant who gathered intelligence on political opponents for Ethiopia’s brutal Marxist-Leninist Derg regime has won another chance to obtain permanent resident status in Canada after Federal Court Justice John Norris ruled that immigration officials unreasonably rejected his application for humanitarian relief.

Mesresha Zewide, 54, came to Canada in 2004 and was granted refugee protection in 2008. Immigration officials later determined his involvement with the Derg made him inadmissible to Canada for crimes against humanity and ordered his deportation in 2017, according to the National Post.

Zewide’s work for the communist regime began in 1989, when he was 17 and was forcibly recruited to work for a local kebele in Addis Ababa. The neighbourhood organizations were used by the governing Derg to monitor political opposition.

An American woman convicted of importing nearly 4.7 kilograms of cocaine through Toronto Pearson International Airport has been sentenced to six years in prison after an Ontario judge found systemic anti-black racism contributed to the offence and diminished her moral culpability.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Nancy Dennison sentenced 39-year-old American Christiana Edwards after a jury convicted her in March of importing cocaine into Canada.

Edwards arrived at Pearson on a flight from Kingston, Jamaica, while travelling onward to Manchester, England. Border officers found 3,195 grams of cocaine hidden in one suitcase and another 1,481.5 grams behind the liner of a second, for a total of 4,676.5 grams.

The court estimated the drugs were worth between $82,800 and $561,181, depending on how they were sold.

Edwards testified at trial that she believed she was being paid $10,000 to transport travel documents for Jamaican workers. The jury rejected that explanation and found her guilty.

The Crown sought seven years in prison, while the defence argued for 3.5 years. Ontario jurisprudence generally places first-time offenders importing large quantities of cocaine in a six-to-eight-year sentencing range.

But Dennison considered Edwards' race and experiences with poverty as mitigating factors.

A Saskatchewan man who charged foreign nationals as much as $40,000 for immigration sponsorship while using fake businesses and forged documents to obtain work and residency permits will serve his sentence in the community.

Balvir Singh, 58, pleaded guilty in April to counselling misrepresentation under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Last month, Saskatchewan Court of King’s Bench Justice Timothy Keene sentenced him to a conditional sentence of two years less a day and imposed a $10,000 fine.

The conditional sentence allows Singh to avoid serving his custodial sentence behind bars. He must instead live at an approved residence, obey a curfew and cannot leave Saskatchewan without permission.

An Ontario judge has sentenced a 47-year-old man who admitted to procuring an 18-year-old woman for prostitution and profiting from her sex work to just one additional day in custody, after giving him enhanced credit for time already served in pre-trial detention.

In a July 17 decision, Justice Michael Derstine of the Ontario Superior Court accepted guilty pleas from Hamed Khogyani to procuring a woman to offer sexual services between April 2015 and March 2018 and obtaining a material benefit from those offences.

According to the court, Khogyani met the woman when she was 18 years old and struggling with drug addiction. The judge found he exploited her youth and vulnerability, convincing her to work in the sex trade while driving her to hotels, supplying her with drugs, taking photographs for sex trade advertisements, and collecting at least $20,000 she earned.

The victim later became pregnant with his child, and the court heard he continued persuading her to sell sexual services during her pregnancy and after the child's birth, telling her the family needed the money.

An Ontario immigration consultant convicted of immigration offences involving the private sponsorship of Syrian refugees will receive a new trial after the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the trial judge's extraordinary delay in issuing written reasons created a reasonable apprehension that the judgment had been justified after the verdict had already been reached.

In a unanimous decision released July 30, a three-judge panel consisting of Justice Gary T. Trotter, Justice Patrick J. Monahan and Justice Jonathan Dawe set aside the convictions of Wissam "Sam" Qita and his company, 7891296 Canada Inc.

Justice Trotter wrote the court's decision.

Qita, an immigration consultant, had been convicted on 10 counts under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The charges arose from his role in sponsoring nine Syrian refugees through Canada's Private Sponsorship of Refugees program.

Prosecutors alleged Qita improperly acted as both an immigration consultant and a sponsor, accepted settlement funds from refugee applicants that sponsors were prohibited from receiving, made false representations to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and counselled some applicants to falsely tell immigration officials they had not paid him consulting fees.

Following a 25-day trial, the trial judge delivered bottom-line guilty verdicts on March 11, 2022, but did not provide written reasons.

Although she initially told the parties her reasons would be ready within two to three weeks, they were not released until Dec. 19, 2022 — nine months and nine days after the verdicts were announced. During that period, the case was repeatedly adjourned as counsel waited for the written decision before proceeding to sentencing.

An Alberta Court of Appeal judge has granted a convicted drug trafficker and sex offender more time to appeal his criminal convictions, ruling that exceptional circumstances justify hearing the case despite the missed deadline because the convictions could result in his deportation to Somalia.

In a July 27 decision reported in the National Post, Justice Kevin Feth of the Alberta Court of Appeal granted Mahir Yahya Sharif an extension of time to appeal convictions stemming from guilty pleas entered in 2022. Sharif argues he would not have pleaded guilty had he understood that doing so would almost certainly result in his removal from Canada.

Sharif, who arrived in Canada as a refugee in 2019 after his family was recognized as Convention refugees by the United Nations, pleaded guilty to trafficking large quantities of methamphetamine and fentanyl, sexual assault, taxi fraud, theft under $5,000 and mischief. He was sentenced to three years in prison and has since been found inadmissible to Canada on grounds of serious criminality.

According to Justice Feth's decision, Sharif alleges his lawyer advised him that pleading guilty would likely avoid deportation because the charges were "not serious." Sharif says he was unaware that a conviction for sexual assault or a sentence exceeding six months would make him inadmissible to Canada and eliminate his right to appeal a removal order as a permanent resident.

Justice Feth concluded there were "unique and special circumstances" warranting an extension of time to pursue the appeal.

The B.C. Supreme Court has ruled that key provisions of British Columbia's Mental Health Act are unconstitutional, finding the province's involuntary psychiatric treatment regime violated the Charter rights of patients by permitting treatment without first determining whether they had the capacity to consent.

In a decision by Justice Lauren Blake, the court found the legislation granted hospital directors sweeping authority to impose psychiatric treatment on involuntarily admitted patients without first assessing their decision-making capacity, according to Global News.

Justice Blake wrote that the impugned provisions "perpetuate the stereotype that individuals suffering from a mental disorder lack capacity," concluding the law failed to provide adequate safeguards for individual autonomy and informed consent.

The constitutional challenge was brought by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, which argued B.C.'s approach to involuntary psychiatric treatment infringed the rights of people living with mental illness and disabilities.

An Ontario judge has ordered the superintendent of the Central East Correctional Centre to appear in court to explain why a prisoner was not delivered for a scheduled sentencing hearing, warning that what he described as a "systemic issue" with prisoner transportation can no longer be tolerated.

Justice Robert Horton of the Ontario Court of Justice ordered Central East Correctional Centre Superintendent Karen Stoffers to attend a contempt hearing on Aug. 7 after an accused man facing sex-related charges involving minors was not brought to the Belleville courthouse as ordered.

The Quebec Superior Court has dismissed an appeal challenging Quebec's controversial COVID-19 curfew, ruling that while the unprecedented measure violated several Charter rights, those infringements were justified under the Constitution because of the pandemic.

In a decision released July 29, Justice Carl Thibault upheld a lower court ruling involving Stéphanie Pépin, who was ticketed on January 9, 2021, after police stopped her while she was driving to attend a peaceful protest against Quebec's newly imposed nighttime curfew.

Quebec was the only province in Canada to impose a province-wide curfew during the pandemic. Residents were barred from leaving their homes between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., with fines ranging from $1,000 to $6,000 for violations. The curfew remained in force until May 28, 2021, before being reintroduced from December 31, 2021, to January 17, 2022.

An Alberta judge has acquitted a man charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting his then-wife while she slept, ruling the Crown failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted consciously or intentionally because he was likely experiencing a sleep disorder known as sexsomnia.

In a July 17 decision, Justice Ayla Akgungor of the Alberta Court of King's Bench found there was a reasonable possibility the accused was suffering from a non-REM parasomnia, a sleep disorder that can include unconscious sexual behaviour during sleep.