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30 Can. Bus. L.J. 210 (1998)
Fraud in the Canadian Courts: An Unwarranted Expansion of the Scope of the Criminal Sanction

handle is hein.journals/canadbus30 and id is 228 raw text is: FRAUD IN THE CANADIAN COURTS: AN UNWARRANTED EXPANSION OF THE SCOPE OF THE CRIMINAL SANCTION Kevin Davis and Julian Roy* CONTENTS I. T he E ra of E xpansion .............................................................................. 2 11 I. T he Elem ents of the O ffence ........................................................... 211 (a) T he A ctus R eus ......................................................................... 2 12 (b) T he M ens R ea ........................................................................... 2 13 2. Application of the Expanded Definition of Fraud ........................... 214 (a) Fraud on Creditors and Minority Shareholders ........................ 215 (i) R . v. O lan .......................................................................... 2 15 (ii) R . v. Z latic ......................................................................... 2 17 (b) Fraud Involving D eception ....................................................... 219 II. The C ase for Strict Construction ............................................................. 222 1. F air N otice ....................................................................................... 224 2. Criminalizing Socially Beneficial Behaviour .................................. 227 3. Arbitrary or Discriminatory Prosecution ......................................... 233 4. Usurping the Role of Parliam ent ...................................................... 234 Ill. L im iting P rincip les .................................................................................. 235 IV . C onclusio n ............................................................................................... 236 Corporate and commercial lawyers who have not paid attention to recent developments in criminal law will probably be surprised to discover the range of activities that may now attract criminal sanction. All sorts of commercial dealings that lawyers may pre- viously have regarded as merely unethical, or at worst civilly actionable, now appear criminal when examined in light of recent * Kevin Davis is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. Julian Roy is an associate with the firm of Rotenberg, Shidlowski & Morton in Toronto. We wish to thank Sara Seck for excellent research assistance and the Wright Foundation for its financial support. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 27h Annual Workshop on Commercial and Consumer Law in October, 1997. We are also grateful to Victor Ramraj for the helpful conversations we had with him in the early stages of this project and to GuyLaine Charles and the editor of this journal for their comments. Of course we remain responsible for any errors or omissions. 210

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