Case information

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Criminal law — Sentencing — Aboriginal Offenders — Effect of an offender’s Aboriginal heritage when sentencing the offender for breaching a term of a long-term supervision order — Paramount sentencing principle when sentencing for breach of a long-term supervision order

The respondent was convicted of break and enter and sexual assault, and released from custody in 2003 on a long-term supervision order. The long-term supervision order requires that he abstain from intoxicants. A urinalysis in 2009 revealed that he had consumed morphine and cocaine and the respondent admitted to occasional consumption of both substances. He was charged with breach of his supervision order. On March 19, 2010, he pleaded guilty to one count of failing to comply with his long term supervision order contrary to s. 753(1) of the Criminal Code. The sentencing judge, in part emphasizing the need to protect the public from the risk that the respondent will re-offend, sentenced him to 3 years of incarceration. The respondent is of Aboriginal heritage. He grew up in Ross River, Yukon Territory. His parents, who died when he was very young, suffered from substance abuse problems. He lived with his grandparents until he was sent to residential school at the age of five, where he suffered from physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse. He returned to Ross River when he was nine years old and has abused drugs and alcohol for most of his life since then, with the exception of a six-year period of sobriety during the 1990s. A majority of the Court of Appeal held that the sentencing judge failed to properly consider the respondent’s Aboriginal heritage and failed to properly emphasize rehabilitation. It reduced the sentence to one year.