Preface

AuthorSteve Coughlan
Pages17-18
xvii
PR EFAC E
The four years since the publication of the third edition of this book
have seen significant developments in the law of crimin al procedure.
This is true w ith regard to the Criminal Code its elf, as well as to the
caselaw around it. Most signi ficantly, 2019 saw the enactment of Bill
C-75, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act
and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. That
Bill effected large-scale ch anges across the Criminal Code on a scale
that has not been seen in m any decades. These changes affect the rules
relating to compelling appea rance, to bail, to preliminary inquir ies, to
jury trials, and to many other thi ngs. Those changes are only coming
in to force as this edition was b eing prepared, and some of the amend-
ments — such as the abolition of peremptory challenges — have already
led to Charter challenges. It is likely to be years before some of the
issues around these changes are authoritatively determined, but in the
meantime it is valuable to update this text to describe the changes.
Other developments have also occurred in the caselaw from the
Supreme Court of Canada, including significant decisions around
search and seizure, powers of arrest, and powers of detention, and in
particular t he Court’s most thorough engagement yet with the issue of
racial profiling. These decisions are pursued in the appropriate chap-
ters. The discussion of caselaw is current to December 2019.
Note as well that what can be regarded a s a companion volume to
this text is now al so available: The Anatomy of Criminal Procedure: A Vis-
ual Guide to the Law (Toronto: Irwin L aw, 2019). That book, co-authored

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