law in assessing his credibility and seeks leave to appeal his sentence on the basis that it is manifestly unfit.
Analysis
(a) Entrapment
( i) General principles
[30] The seminal authority on the modern law of entrapment
is the Supreme Court’s decision in R. v. Mack, [1988] 2 S.C.R.
903, [1988] S.C.J. No. 91. In setting out the contours of the
entrapment doctrine, Lamer J., as he then was, sought to balance two competing objectives. On the one hand, he recognized
that the police must be given considerable latitude in their
investigation of crime, especially consensual crimes such as drug
trafficking where traditional investigative techniques may be
ineffective: Mack, at pp. 916-17 S.C.R.; R. v. Imoro, [2010] O.J.
No. 586, 2010 ONCA 122, 251 C.C.C. (3d) 131, at para. 8,
affd [2010] 3 S.C.R. 62, [2010] S.C.J. No. 50, 2010 SCC 50.
On the other hand, he acknowledged that the police do not have
unlimited power to randomly test the virtue of individuals and
manipulate them to obtain convictions: Mack, at pp. 941, 959
S.C.R.; Imoro, at para. 9 (C.A.).
[31] Entrapment is a variant of the abuse of process doctrine.
If an accused can show that the strategy the state used to obtain
a conviction exceeded permissible limits, “a judicial condonation
of the prosecution would by definition offend the community”
and the accused is entitled to a stay of proceedings: Mack,
at p. 976 S.C.R. However, given the serious nature of an
entrapment allegation and the substantial leeway given to the
state to develop techniques to fight crime, a finding of entrapment and a stay of proceedings should be granted only in the
“clearest of cases”: Mack, at pp. 975-76 S.C.R. The accused must
establish the defence on a balance of probabilities: Mack, at
p. 975 S.C.R.
[32] In Mack, at pp. 964-65 S.C.R., the Supreme Court set out
the two principal categories of entrapment. The defence is availa-
ble when either
(1) “the authorities provide a person with an opportunity to
commit an offence without acting on a reasonable suspicion
that this person is already engaged in criminal activity or
pursuant to a bona fide inquiry”; or
(2) “although having such a reasonable suspicion or acting in
the course of a bona fide inquiry, they go beyond providing
an opportunity and induce the commission of an offence”.
