Resources

Cases & Decisions

• BB and JFCY v Minister of Citizenship and Immigration [Immigration Detention of Child]

  JFCY was a public interest litigant in a judicial review of a decision to continue the detention of a woman,…

• R v ZW [Access to YCJA Pre-Sentence Report]

  JFCY acted as amicus curiae to the Ontario Court of Justice where the applicant was a plaintiff in a negligence…

• Kanthasamy v Canada [Humanitarian & Compassionate Application by a Child]

  JFCY intervened in this case at the Supreme Court of Canada. At the time of the hearing, the appellant was…

• CMM v DGC [Minor does not require a litigation guardian to apply for child support]

  JFCY intervened in the appeal of CMM v. DGC which deals with the question of whether a minor applying to…

• Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care et al v Canada [Refugee Health Care]

  JFCY was a public interest applicant to a court challenge to the 2012 cuts in Refugee Healthcare by the Government…

• Ashley Smith Inquest

  The Ashley Smith inquest was an Ontario coroner’s inquest into the death of young offender Ashley Smith, a teenager who…

• R v RC [DNA samples]

  A Nova Scotia court ordered that a young person found guilty of an assault was required to give a DNA sample. The decision was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. Justice for Children and Youth intervened in this case as a “friend of the court”. Lawyers at Justice for Children and Youth successfully argued that in deciding whether to order DNA from a young person the trial judge must take into account the underlying principles and objectives of the youth criminal justice legislation as well as those in international law.

• R v DB [presumption of youth sentence, onus on Crown for adult sentence]

  D.B. is a young person who was found guilty of manslaughter and given a youth sentence. The sentencing judge declared unconstitutional the sections of the Youth Criminal Justice Act which make it a presumption that the youth would get an adult sentence and have his identity published. The Crown appealed the decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal. Justice for Children and Youth was made an intervener in the appeal and argued that the sentencing judge was correct.

• R v CD & CDK [Definition of “violent offence”]

  JFCY intervened in 2 cases heard together in the Supreme Court of Canada in the spring of 2005 about the interpretation of the term “violent offence” under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. This was one of the first cases in which the Court was asked to interpret the relatively new Youth Criminal Justice Act.