No need to set time limit for sentencing proceedings, Supreme Court of Canada rules

The Supreme Court of Canada says a man is entitled to a reduction in his sentence for sexual assault because the post-verdict sentencing phase of the case took too long.

But the top court also says there is no need for a set time limit for determining a sentence because there is no persuasive evidence of a culture of complacency in sentencing proceedings in Canada.

The man, an Iranian citizen living in Ontario on a post-graduation work permit, was convicted in October 2021.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms says someone charged with an offence has the right to be tried within a reasonable time.

Sentencing proceedings were ongoing in October 2022 when the man applied for a stay of his case on the argument that his Charter right to timely justice had been infringed.

The Ontario trial judge dismissed the application. She cited a 2019 Ontario ruling in concluding that a post-verdict sentencing delay was subject to a five-month limit, but said that in the man’s case the delay amounted to just under four months after deducting time for various reasons.

She imposed a conditional sentence of two years less a day, followed by one year of probation.

The offender took his case to the Ontario Court of Appeal, which revised the net post-verdict sentencing delay, finding it exceeded the five-month presumptive ceiling and therefore infringed the offender’s Charter right.

The Court of Appeal reduced the man’s conditional sentence to 20 months.

In its 9-0 ruling Friday, the Supreme Court said the man’s Charter right had indeed been infringed due to the length of the sentencing proceedings. It also agreed that the sentence reduction was “a proper and proportionate remedy.”

But the top court said the Ontario Court of Appeal erred in law by holding that post-verdict sentencing delay exceeding five months is presumptively unreasonable under the Charter.

Writing for the court, Justice Sheilah Martin said the Charter right to be tried within a reasonable time applies “to each of the many stages in a criminal proceeding and spans from the initial laying of the charge to the final imposition of any sentence.”

In a landmark 2016 judgment known as R v. Jordan, the Supreme Court spelled out a framework for determining whether the length of a criminal trial violates the Charter. It set presumptive ceilings that require trials to be concluded within 18 months in provincial courts and 30 months in superior courts.

Martin noted in today’s ruling that the Supreme Court has not set limits for delays at any other stage of a criminal proceeding.

The post-verdict delay must be assessed separately because, once convicted, the offender is no longer presumed innocent and the fair-trial interests protected before the verdict are spent, although significant liberty and security interests remain, the top court said.

“The Jordan ceilings were adopted to respond to a specific, proven culture of complacency in bringing accused persons to trial,” Martin wrote, adding that “no comparable evidentiary foundation has been established for the sentencing phase of criminal proceedings.”

Sentencing is also a highly variable and information-dependent process, Martin said.

While some matters may be resolved quickly, others require reports, contested factual hearings, submissions on collateral consequences or time for the sentencing judge to craft a fit and proportionate sentence, she wrote.

“Given that variability, a fixed ceiling would risk treating unlike cases alike and could undermine the flexibility required by Parliament’s direction that sentencing occur ‘as soon as practicable,'” she said.

The top court said the appropriate test for assessing a sentencing delay is whether the time taken to impose the sentence was markedly longer than it reasonably should have been in all of the circumstances.

Martin said that in the event of a Charter breach, the remedy that ordinarily would be appropriate for unreasonable post-verdict sentencing delay is a reduction in sentence, “although in exceptional cases a stay of proceedings may be available.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2026.