R v Oakes
| R v Oakes | |
|---|---|
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| Hearing: March 12, 1985 Judgment: February 28, 1986 |
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| Full case name | Her Majesty The Queen v David Edwin Oakes |
| Citations | [1986] 1 S.C.R. 103; 1986 CanLII 46 (S.C.C.); (1986), 26 D.L.R. (4th) 200; (1986), 24 C.C.C. (3d) 321; [1986] 19 C.R.R. 308; (1986), 50 C.R. (3d) 1; (1986), 14 O.A.C. 335 |
| Docket No. | 17550 |
| Prior history | Judgment for defendant in the Court of Appeal for Ontario |
| Ruling | Appeal dismissed. |
| Holding | |
| Section 8 of the Narcotic Control Act violates the right to presumption of innocence under section 11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and cannot be saved under section 1 of the Charter. | |
| Court Membership | |
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Chief Justice: Brian Dickson Puisne Justices: Jean Beetz, Willard Estey, William McIntyre, Julien Chouinard, Antonio Lamer, Bertha Wilson, Gerald Le Dain, Gérard La Forest |
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| Reasons given | |
| Majority | Dickson C.J. (paras. 1-81), joined by Chouinard, Lamer, Wilson and Le Dain JJ. |
| Concurrence | Estey J. (para. 82), joined by McIntyre J. |
| Beetz and La Forest JJ. took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
R v Oakes [1986] 1 S.C.R. 103 is a case decided by the Supreme Court of Canada which established the famous Oakes test, an analysis of the limitations clause (Section 1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows reasonable limitations on rights and freedoms through legislation if it can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
On December 17, 1981, David Edwin Oakes was caught with 8 vials of hashish oil outside of a tavern in London, Ontario. He claimed he had purchased 10 vials of hashish oil for $150 for his own use. He was also in possession of $619.45 which he claimed to have received from a government program. Despite Oakes' protests that the vials were meant for pain relief and that the money he had was from a workers' compensation cheque, Section 8 of the Narcotic Control Act (NCA) established a 'rebuttable presumption" that possession of a narcotic inferred an intention to traffic unless the accused established the absence of such an intention.
Oakes made a charter challenge, claiming that the reverse onus created by the presumption of possession for purposes of trafficking violated the presumption of innocence guarantee under section 11(d) of the Charter. The issue before the Court was whether s. 8 of the NCA violated s. 11(d) of the Charter, and whether any violation of s. 11(d) could be upheld under s. 1.
The Court was unanimous in holding that the shift in onus violated both Oakes's section 11(d) rights and indirectly his section 7 rights, and could not be justified under section 1 of the charter. This was because there was no rational connection between basic possession and the presumption of trafficking, and therefore the shift in onus is not related to the previous challenge to section 11(d) of the charter.
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