Background
David Edwin Oakes was caught with 8 vials of hashish oil. He claimed he had purchased 10 vials of hashish oil for $150 for his own use. He was also in possession of $619.45 which he claimed to have received from a government program. Despite Oakes' protests that the vials were meant for pain relief and that the money he had was from a $666 workers' compensation cheque, Section 8 of the Narcotic Control Act (NCA) established a 'rebuttable presumption" that possession of a narcotic inferred an intention to traffic unless the accused established the absence of such an intention.
Oakes made a constitutional challenge, claiming that the reverse onus created by the presumption of possession for purposes of trafficking violated the presumption of innocence guarantee under section 11(d) of the Charter. The issue before the Court was whether s. 8 of the NCA violated s. 11(d) of the Charter, and whether any violation of s. 11(d) could be upheld under s. 1.
Read more about this topic: R. V. Oakes
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