Big case came out this week from the Alberta Court of Appeal, with direct and huge consequences for the law of consent to sexual activity and police powers to search…



R v Barton, 20254 ABCA 34

🧵canlii.org/en/ab/abca/doc… First, What did the Court say?

1. It said that consent to sexual activity is *automatically* null if a reasonable person would foresee that significant bodily harm would occur.

Just so that is understood: the Court says a person CANNOT consent to certain sex acts.

In respect of the Globe article authored by former Justice Abella, my substantive criticisms are:

- it asserts that a party lodging a complaint about a crime must be morally blameless - false.

- it argues a historic victim can never be a future criminal - false.

Contd it argues that credibly-alleged crimes should not be stopped, but left for history to deal with - this is morally outrageous.

- ultimately, it argues Israel gets a pass because of WWII - this is the exact logic of oppression in Palestine, and cannot continue.

The Secure Air Travel Act, or SATA (colloquially called the “No-fly list legislation”) has been upheld as constitutional:

decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decision… I plan to write in more detail about Justice Noël’s decision in the coming days. For now, it’s worth just stepping back and considering how perverse this regime is from a bird’s eye view level…