Court of Appeal stays firearms offences for unreasonable delay

When can defence counsel turn down dates without being penalized under s. 11(b)? In R v Qureshi, 2026 ONCA 20, the Court of Appeal for Ontario answers this question. Where a trial date has already been scheduled beyond the Jordan ceiling, defence counsel is entitled to turn down belated offers of below-ceiling dates without converting what follows into defence delay. The appeal allowed and stay entered on appeal.

This is the latest in a series of cases at the Court of Appeal addressing what to make of this issue. Unacceptable delay continues to plague our trial courts, resulting in presumptively unconstitutional dates being the first offered by trial coordinators. When this happens, unless the Crown immediately moves to prioritize your case and re-arrange their other matters, the delay will be unreasonable -- even where the Crown is eventually able to offer dates below the presumptive ceiling. Here, the Crown waited five months after the original dates were offered to undertake its reprioritization exercise. Even though the trial was still a year away, Justice Coroza held that the Crown had waited too long. Defence counsel could not be blamed for turning down new dates that would have brought delay below the presumptive ceiling.

This case should be read together with two similar cases our firm successfully argued: R v Veritis, 2024 ONCA 232 and R v Bechamp, 2025 ONCA 233. Each of those were Crown appeals successfully defended by lead counsel Chris Rudnicki where a trial judge had stayed the proceedings even though defence counsel had turned down trial dates that would have brought the delay below the Jordan ceiling. But each is a short endorsement, whereas Qureshi fleshes out the issue in much more detail. It is a more authoritative precedent and will be more helpful to defence counsel in future cases.