C-392 – An Act to amend the Criminal Code to address the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Jordan – changes the Criminal Code to limit how much time is allowed between charging someone with a crime and completing their trial.
So first up, a bit of context. In R. v. Jordan there were a number of delays from the prosecution. This resulted in the total time between being charged and the end of Jordan’s trial being 3.6 years. During this process it was decided that this didn’t violate Jordan’s right to a trial within a reasonable time because he didn’t suffer “significant prejudice”, which was one of the requirements to declare a trial taking too long. At the end of Jordan’s trial it was ruled that significant prejudice is a horrible way to judge things as it’s vague and confusing. The Supreme Court laid out a new way to determine if a case is taking too long, and this Act simply writes this system into law.
Reasonable Time for Trial
So how long is a reasonable time for trial? This Act sets it so a trial before the Supreme Court needs to be completed within 30 months from the time charges are laid, while trials in provincial court will have 18 months.
There’s a pair of exceptions here. First, any delays caused by the defence won’t be counted when determining how long a trial has gone for. The defence won’t be able to stall out the trial, only the prosecution is punished for causing delays. The second exception is that these time limits don’t apply when dealing with a “primary designated offence”. These tend to be more severe charges, such as sexual assault or hijacking, and usually result in the offender having a DNA sample taken and added to the National DNA Bank.
Progress of C-392
C-392 is currently outside of the Order of Precedence.