(OTTAWA) A woman who has been banned from driving for nearly two years pending sentencing would face “a kind of double punishment” if she were given an additional mandatory one-year ban, concluded Canada’s highest court.
The unanimous Supreme Court of Canada decision upholds the common law convention that a court may award credit for time already spent where there is no express provision prohibiting it.
The decision was released Friday in the case of Jennifer Basque, who was charged with driving a motor vehicle with excessive blood alcohol in Moncton, New Brunswick, in 2017.
Basque spent the next 21 months, between his initial court appearance and sentencing, under a driving ban.
Basque pleaded guilty and a judge handed her a $1,000 fine and a one-year mandatory driving ban, but considered the elapsed time meaning she was not subject to the ban additional driving.
However, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal allowed the Crown’s appeal and varied the judge’s decision to include the mandatory one-year driving ban.
Basque argued that his request for time credit was in no way limited by the imposition of the mandatory one-year ban. The Crown, on the other hand, said granting credit would conflict with the application of the minimum prohibition, even though the law is silent on the issue of granting credit.
In its Friday ruling, the Supreme Court said that by the time Basque was sentenced, she had already served the minimum driving ban required by law.
“Therefore, no additional prohibition is appropriate in this case,” Judge Nicholas Kasirer wrote on behalf of the court.
Granting credit based on common law discretion “fits perfectly with the application of the minimum prohibition” provided by the statute in this case, Kasirer added.
“Therefore, it was open to the trial judge to take into account the 21 months already served by Ms.me Basque, since it would not thwart the will of the legislator,” he wrote.
“The intention of Parliament is respected whether the punishment is served before or after the pronouncement of the sentence, since in either case the effect on the offender is identical. »
Absent a clearly expressed legislative intent to the contrary, a statute should not be construed to materially alter the law, including the common law, the Court held.
If applicable law required a minimum sentence, it could lead to counterintuitive or even absurd results, Kasirer wrote.
He said the imposition of an additional one-year punishment in Basque’s case “would amount to a kind of double punishment, contrary to the most basic requirements of justice and fairness.”