Sault Ste. Marie, Mens Rea and the Halfway House: Public Welfare Offences Get a Home of Their Own

Abstract

A continuing source of dissatisfaction in Canadian criminal law has been the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the status of absolute liability offences. Although this category of liability has been part of Anglo-Canadian law in one form or another for well over a century, relatively few steps have been taken by the courts to arrive at a clear and settled statement of its applicability and scope in the criminal process. As Brian Hogan notes, "there is no discernible pattern which enables the ordinary lawyer to predict with any measure of confidence whether a particular offence will be held to be one of (absolute) liability or not. Few areas of law have spawned so much litigation and so little of it is edifying." One of the greatest obstacles to clarification lies in the inability or unwillingness of the courts to conceive of the problem other than in exclusive terms of full mens rea or absolute liability.