February 9, 2018
R v Canadian Broadcasting Corp 2018 SCC 5

An accused was charged with the first degree murder of a person under the age of 18. Upon the Crown’s request, a mandatory ban prohibiting the publication, broadcast or transmission in any way of any information that could identify the victim was ordered pursuant to s. 486.4(2.2) of the Criminal Code. Prior to the issuance of the publication ban, CBC posted information revealing the identity of the victim on its website. As a result of CBC’s refusal to remove this information, the Crown sought an order citing CBC in criminal contempt of the publication ban and an interlocutory injunction directing the removal of the victim’s identifying information. The chambers judge concluded that the Crown had not established the requirements for a mandatory interlocutory injunction, and dismissed its application. The majority of the Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and granted the mandatory interlocutory injunction.

The decision to grant or refuse an interlocutory injunction is a discretionary exercise, with which an appellate court must not interfere solely because it would have exercised the discretion differently. Appellate intervention is justified only where the chambers judge proceeded on a misunderstanding of the law or of the evidence before him, where an inference can be demonstrated to be wrong by further evidence that has since become available, where there has been a change of circumstances or where the decision to grant or refuse the injunction is so aberrant that it must be set aside on the ground that no reasonable judge could have reached it.

In this case, the Crown’s burden was not to show a case for criminal contempt that leans one way or another, but rather a case, based on the law and evidence presented, that has a strong likelihood that it would be successful in proving CBC’s guilt of criminal contempt of court. This is not an easy burden to discharge and the Crown has failed to do so here. The chambers judge applied the correct legal test in deciding the Crown’s application and his decision that the Crown’s case failed to satisfy that test did not, in these circumstances, warrant appellate intervention.