Specific Types of Witnesses

• Author: Matthew Gourlay/Brock Jones/Jill D. Makepeace/Glen Crisp/Renee Pomerance
• Pages: 389-416

CHAPTER 9

SPECIFIC TYPES OF WITNESSES

I. Children as Witnesses ............................................. 

A. Child Witnesses Generally ...................................... 

B. Section . of the Canada Evidence Act ......................... 

C. Section  of the Youth Criminal Justice Act ..................... 

D. Evaluating Inconsistencies in the Evidence of Children.............. 

E. Children and a “Propensity to Lie” ................................ 

F. How to Ask Questions of a Child Witness ......................... 

G. Consider the Use of Appropriate Testimonial Aids .................. 

H. Prepare the Child Beforehand................................... 

I. Keep Questions Simple and Subject Matter Clear .................. 

J. Act Appropriately and Professionally ............................. 

K. Tell a Child Witness That It’s OK to Say “I Don’t Know” or

“INeed a Break” ............................................... 

L. What If a Child Witness Won’t Respond to Questions in

Cross-Examination? ........................................... 

II. Unsavoury Witnesses .............................................. 

A. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

B. Vetrovec Witness .............................................. 

C. Caution to the Trier of Fact ..................................... 

D. Confirmatory Evidence......................................... 

E. Assessing the Quality of Confirmatory Evidence ................... 

F. One Vetrovec Witness’s Evidence May Confirm Another’s........... 

G. Collusion and Confirmatory Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

III. Cross-Examination of Sexual Assault Complainants.................... 

A. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

B. Prior Sexual History ............................................ 

. Threshold Test for Admissibility............................... 

. Procedural Requirements: Code s Application .............. 

C. Use of Private Records Already in the Possession of theDefence..... 

. Definition of “Record” ....................................... 

. Procedure ................................................. 

. “Likely Relevance” Test ...................................... 

. Reasonable Expectation of Privacy ............................ 

389

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I. CHILDREN AS WITNESSES

A. CHILD WITNESSES GENERALLY

Witnesses may be children or young p ersons.1 Testifying before a ju dge is a strange

experience and can unsettle eve n a mature adult. The process can be even more intimi-

dating for a child.2

Much progress has been made ove r the last 25 years to improve the treatment of

children and young persons in crim inal court. In Rv Levogiannis,3 L’Heureux-DubéJ

of the Supreme Court prefaced he r analysis of the constitutionality of a now amended

section of the Criminal Code that allowed for the use of testimonial a ids by children by

stating that

[t]he goal of the court proces s is truth seeking and, to that end, the evidence of a ll those

involved in judicial pro ceedings must be given in a way that is most favo urable to eliciting

the truth.… [O]ne can not ignore the fact that, in many instan ces, the court process is fail-

ing children, espec ially those who have been victims of abuse , who are then subjected to

further trauma a s participants in the judicial pro cess.…

The plight of children w ho testify and the role courts m ust play in ascertaining the tru th

must not be overlooked…. As t his Court has said, children may req uire different treatment

than adults in the cour troom setting.4

The unique position of child witn esses in the criminal justice context was f urther

explored by the Supreme Court in Rv L(DO).5 Justices L’Heureux-Dubé and Gonthier, in

their concurring reasons, noted that prev ious jurisprudence recognized that the criminal

justice system had to treat children differently f rom adults. Modified ru les of evidence

could be enacted by Parliament to ensure that chi ldren’s evidence is properly received,

and to ensure that the truth-seeking goal of the jud icial process is not undermined by

an unduly rigid approach to courtroom tes timony.6

In Rv W(R),7 the Supreme Court m andated an approach to children’s evidence that

requires the trier of fact to consider the ev idence on a “common sense” basis. Evidence

from child witnesses must be app roached “not from the perspecti ve of rigid stereo-

types” but by “taking into account the strengths a nd weaknesses which characterize the

evidence offered in the par ticular case.”8

Justice McLachlin (as she then was) fur ther cautioned that a rigid approach to assess-

ing a witness’s evidence was inappropr iate:

1 Children are less th an 12 years of age; young per sons are between 12 an d 17.

2 For a detailed exploration of ch ildren as witnesses in the cri minal justice system, see L isa Joyal, Jennifer

Gibson, Lisa H enderson, Emily Lam, an d David Berg, Prosecuting and Defending Offences Against Chil-

dren: A Practitione r’s Handbook (Toronto: Emond, 2019).

3 [1993] 4 SCR 475, 85 CCC (3d) 327, [1993] SJC No 70 (QL).

4 Ibid at 483-84, addressing Code s4 86(2.1) (as it then was word ed).

5 [1993] 4 SCR 419.

6 Ibid at 422.

7 [1992] 2 SCR 122.

8 Ibid at 133-34.

390 MODERN CRIMINAL EVIDENCE

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