In the criminal law there are various defences. One of the least utilized is the defence of necessity and its variant duress. Necessity a defence because it negates the requirement that a wrongful act also be accompanied by malicious or wrongful intent. In latin: mens rea. What is intended is avoiding a grievous harm, such as death, rather than committing a crime.

The classical example is the person who is lost or stranded on a mountain, sure to die of exposure. This person in order to avoid death would be justified in breaking into a cottage in order to avoid death by exposure. The prohibited act, break and enter, is rendered lawful by the “necessity” of avoiding death.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some people agree with the provincial government’s stunt driving law. This law allows a police officer to seize your car and suspend your license on the spot, because he decided that you were traveling 50 km over the speed limit.

Stunt Driving Law Is Unconstitutional

Recently, two decisions have struck down the Stunt Driving law of the Province of Ontario. It is difficult to disagree with the notion that this law is itself an offence against the citizenry. Nevertheless, the Stunt driving laws were struck down for the wrong reason. In short they were declared unconstitutional because they allowed the possibly of jail as an ultimate punishment for an absolute liability offence. An absolute liability offence requires only that the prohibited act be proven. There is no defence of due diligence or a mistaken belief in an innocent set of facts. The parking ticket is the seminal example of an absolute liability offence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Politrics From Mr.Harper

Stephen Harper prorogued parliament on December 30, 2009 meaning that this year will start with no sitting parliament, and no legislation being legislated. A great furor is winding itself up among the citizens of Canada. This is Mr. Harpers’s second use of suspending parliament to avoid politics. Last year, he suspended parliament to avoid being ousted by the “coalition of the Liberals, Bloc and NDP This year the rogue has prorogued to prevent further embarrassment from the inquiry into the torture of Afghans by Afghans, in Afghanistan.
Read the rest of this entry »

They call it “Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment”. I call it a material misrepresentation. I do not know what the Maple Leafs play but watching them makes it difficult to recognize as a sport and it sure is not entertainment (not for me anyway).

The pretense of the sport of hockey or entertainment going on at the Air Canada Centre when the Maple Leafs play is a material misrepresentation which ought to create cause for a class action suite.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Non-alcoholic Too Susceptible For Such Forcible Stops!!!

I do not drink. I do not drink because the penalty for drinking and driving is out of all proportion to the offence. I reason that by never drinking, there is no possibility that I would be convicted of impaired driving or driving while having over 80 mg of alcohol in my blood. I have however still been pulled over in Ride programs. The police pull over a lane of traffic and force me to wait until they are able to able to come and ask me questions, like “Have you had anything to drink tonight?” The answer “no” together with an absence of the odour of alcohol and no bottles or beverages in the car will get me on my way. It is a waste of my time and it is a waste of the officers time; who ought to be out detecting reasonable and probable cause to stop or search or demand samples from someone who likely did something wrong. While the police are harassing law abiding citizens, someone is committing a crime and getting away with it undetected.
Read the rest of this entry »

The federal government has passed a law which ends 2 for 1 credit for time served in jail prior to trial or plea. This law was given royal accent in late October of 2009. It seems to be another popular “law and order” move by our government.

There general agreement that there ought not to be more people waiting for trial in jail than are serving sentence in jail. The government is trying to ease the backlog by pushing people to go to trial faster or in actual practice to plead guilty faster.

Read the rest of this entry »

The province has now decided to prosecute truck drivers for smoking in their trucks. In a bit of perverted logic the powers that be have declared that a truck is a workplace and as such is governed by the no smoke in the work place statutes.

This sort of contorted application of our laws is plain and simple tyranny, designed to collect money through fines and force people to conform for the sake of being able to force them.

Read the rest of this entry »

In politics and in drafting legislation there is one law that is often overlooked. It is the law of unintended consequences. Simply stated if you draft a law with the intention to do or prevent one thing, the actual effect of the law will be to encourage or discourage something entirely different.

Read the rest of this entry »

The British Columbia Attorney General has referred the question of the constitutionality of the Criminal Code of Canada’s offence of Polygamy, to the British Columbia Court of Appeal. It has taken this action because the lower Supreme Court of British Columbia seems likely to strike down the law prohibiting polygamy. The province had appointed two different special prosecutors to determine if causes could be brought against polygamists. B.C has a community of fundamentalist Mormans who practice polygamy.

Read the rest of this entry »

The answer, is six months and counting, as evidenced by the workman in the middle of Dufferin from Steeles to the north intersection of Glen Shields.

Every day for the past year I have crawled along Dufferin to and from work while traffic has been held hostage by a minor road upgrade and the most extensive and extravagant flowerpot proposed by man. Not only does this monstrosity consume what ought to be an additional lane of traffic but it must contain more money than dirt. Why is this giant flower pot barrier being built down the center of the roadway and who are the idiots who thought that we would like to pay 10’s of millions of dollars and almost as many hours watching construction workers saunter down the middle of the road setting up forms for concrete that took 3 months to build and pour, when the job should have taken 3 days, if it really had to be done.

The thought that the infamous Vaughan City Council must be at the center of this corrupted and useless expense pounds in my head, like my fists on the steering wheel.
Twice each day I along with thousands of others are held captive by incompetence, while being reminded that we are being robbed, fleeced and shaken down for the sake of a magnificent container planting, and one less lane on an overburdened street. Maybe they think that if they make traffic so congested then people will find some other route to and from work. But then again maybe they don’t think at all. Does anyone know if the people that own the construction company are related to any of the folks on council? Just wondering. Do you think that they will spend any time picking the weeds out of the planter once it is completed?