Supreme Court says 2005 Ontario decision launched a line of cases exempting offenders from mandatory registration
A 2005 ruling by Ontario Court of Justice Justice Bruce Duncan exempting a convicted child pornography offender from Canada’s National Sex Offender Registry, became the leading precedent for a series of decisions that narrowed Parliament’s sex offender registration law, according to the Supreme Court of Canada.
In R. v. Have (2005 ONCJ 27), Justice Duncan declined to order a man convicted of two counts of possessing child pornography to register under the newly enacted Sex Offender Information Registration Act (SOIRA).
At the time, SOIRA generally required convicted sex offenders to register with police, but judges retained discretion to exempt offenders if the impact of registration would be “grossly disproportionate” to the public interest.
Justice Duncan found the case qualified for that exemption.
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