Canadians convicted of child enticement will no longer face a minimum prison sentence, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday.
The country’s highest court has been asked to review two cases in which Quebecers are guilty of child enticement, a crime that involves using telecommunications means to contact a minor in order to commit a sexual offense against a minor.
The law stipulates that anyone guilty of child enticement must be punished with a prison sentence of at least six months or one year, depending on which legal means (expedited proceedings or indictment) the public prosecutor uses.
A law abolished in Quebec
However, in two separate decisions in March 2020 and February 2021, two Quebec court judges found that imposing a minimum sentence was unconstitutional. The Court of Appeal and now the Supreme Court have upheld these decisions.
In the case decided in March 2020, Quebecer Maxime Bertrand Marchand was found guilty of luring a 13-year-old girl in 2013 when she was 22 years old. Over the next two years, the man and his young victim had four sexual relationships.
The law stipulated that in addition to the punishment for sexual relations, the man had to receive a minimum sentence of one year for the charge of enticement. However, the defense argued that it was “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Judge Marie-Claude Bélanger agreed with him and reduced his sentence for enticement to just five months, to be served concurrently with a ten-month sentence for sexual relations.
Had the law been enforced, the man would have instead spent 22 months behind bars for his crimes.
Danger of excessive punishment
The Supreme Court believes that an indiscriminate minimum sentence for a crime such as child luring, which covers a wide range of cases, “risks giving rise to a wholly disproportionate and unconstitutional sanction.”
“There will be cases where, due to the seriousness of the offense and the level of moral culpability, the offender may not deserve a prison sentence at all,” Judge Sheilah Martin said on her behalf and that of five of his colleagues.
Quebec judge Suzanne Côté stood out from her colleagues. “Given the seriousness of this offence […], I believe that the controversial mandatory minimum sentences do not violate s. 12 of the Charter,” she said.