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Originally Posted by GGG
Do we actually have a charter right against self-incrimination?
Maybe Section 7 could apply but their certainly isn’t anything specific in the text. Does case law shed some light on this?
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I was scrolling through the thread because it got bumped and saw that I had not responded to this. You have it correctly - it is section 7, and it is enshrined in case law. There are a number of cases you could cite for it, but as an example, this is from
R. v. White, [1999] 2 SCR 417 at 40:
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It is now well-established that there exists, in Canadian law, a principle against self-incrimination that is a principle of fundamental justice under s.7 of the Charter. The meaning of the principle, its underlying rationale, and its current status within Canadian law have been discussed in a series of decisions of this Court [...]
The principle against self-incrimination was described by Lamer C.J. in Jones, supra, at p. 249, as “a general organizing principle of criminal law”. The principle is that an accused is not required to respond to an allegation of wrongdoing made by the state until the state has succeeded in making out a prima facie case against him or her. It is a basic tenet of our system of justice that the Crown must establish a “case to meet” before there can be any expectation that the accused should respond [...]
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