The territorial jurisdiction of a summary conviction court is generally considered to be restricted to the territorial division where the subject matter of the proceedings arose. Pursuant to the Interpretation Act3 jurisdiction of a Judge or Justice must extend to the place where the thing is to be done.4 Section 798 of the Code provides that the summary conviction procedures apply “in the territorial division over which the person who constitutes that court has jurisdiction”. Consequently, a summary conviction court has province-wide jurisdiction if the Judge constituting the court has that jurisdiction. The court with jurisdiction is entitled to order a stay of proceedings or order a transfer of the trial site for an abuse of process if an accused is scheduled to be tried in a judicial region other than where the offence is alleged to have been committed. The accused would generally have to demonstrate hardship either to himself or his witnesses or both in order to demonstrate the abuse.
The above is the an excerpt of Patrick J Ducharme’s book, Canadian Criminal Procedure, available at Amazon or in bulk through MedicaLegal Publishing along with Criminal Trial Strategies.
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