Today a majority of the Court has clarified that Parliament had several objectives in mind when it enacted the proceeds of crime regime. While its primary goal was to ensure that crime does not pay and that it does not benefit the offender, the legal expenses return provision explicitly allows individuals to spend returned seized funds to mount a defence. It does so to provide access to counsel and to give meaningful weight to the presumption of innocence. These objectives ensure fairness to the accused in criminal prosecutions.
Prior to this decision, some courts clawed back reasonable legal expenses as a fine instead of forfeiture. Failure to pay that fine in some cases resulted in an additional term of imprisonment. Today’s majority decision clarifies that this practice of clawing back reasonable legal expenses as a fine will, in most cases, undermine fairness to the accused.
This is an important clarification of the law - even in the proceeds of crime regime of the Criminal Code, a fundamental purpose of the criminal justice system is to provide a fair process to achieve just results, not to extract maximum retribution at any cost.
Read the full judgment here.
Alison M. Latimer and Gregory DelBigio, Q.C. acted as counsel for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.
