Les principes protégeant contre l'auto-incrimination couverts par l'article 7 de la Charte

R. v. Otto, 2019 ONSC 3725

Lien vers la décision

[59]      A review of the s. 7 Charter self-incrimination jurisprudence reveals the following core principles:

•      The Charter generally permits testimonial compulsion as long as its predominant purpose is not to incriminate the person being compelled to speak;

•      When s. 7 of the Charter is engaged, it protects people who are statutorily compelled to speak from having their statements used against them in penal proceedings, either directly or indirectly;

•      Although not every form of statutory testimonial compulsion triggers s. 7 Charter protections, s. 7 is engaged by the compulsory accident reporting schemes in provincial highway traffic legislation (White, supra), and by the powers of testimonial compulsion granted by statute to provincial securities investigators (British Columbia Securities Comm’n v. Branch, infra);

•      Section 7 requires statutorily compelled speakers to receive two forms of ex post facto protection against self-incrimination in subsequent penal proceedings:

▪  “Use immunity” prevents the compelled statements from themselves being admitted as evidence against the speaker;

▪  “Derivative use immunity” prevents the admission of evidence found by the police as a result of a compelled statement, unless the Crown can demonstrate that the police would have found the same evidence independently;

•      A trial court that excludes evidence to prevent a s. 7 Charter breach can do so either pursuant to its common law authority to ensure a fair trial, or as an anticipatory s. 24(1) Charter remedy. Nothing significant turns on this distinction; and

•      The exclusion of compelled statements and undiscoverable derivative evidence to prevent a s. 7 Charter breach is mandatory. It is not subject to the case-by-case discretionary balancing required when exclusion is sought under s. 24(2) of the Charter.

See R. v. S.(R.J.), supra, Re Application under s. 83.28 of the Criminal Code, 2004 SCC 42 (CanLII), 2004 S.C.C. 42, 184 C.C.C. (3d) 449 at paras. 71 and 79, R. v. White, supra, at paras. 71 and 89, British Columbia Securities Commission v. Branch (1995), 1995 CanLII 142 (SCC), 97 C.C.C. (3d) 505 (S.C.C.), and R. v. Soules, supra, at para. 61.