What Is Extradition?

We deal with situations where Canada is seeking the extradition of somebody outside of this country to bring in to Canada for the purposes of prosecution or where somebody is in Canada and another state outside of Canada is seeking to remove them from the country for the purposes of prosecution. It is very common to need a Canadian criminal counsel here when you are in Canada and some other state is seeking your extradition outside of the country.

People find out that they are being extradited by being arrested by a Canadian police officer. In some circumstances, the officer might simply inform them that they are being sought for extradition and they will be given the opportunity to surrender themselves for arrest. In many respects it is similar to any other charge under our criminal code where you are entitled to a bail hearing. Our first order of business and our first priority would be in seeing if we can work out a bail while our clients determine their response to the extradition request. It is not uncommon for us to be contacted by a representative of the foreign government or be contacted by the local Crown Attorney here. They will advise us that there is a request for an extradition from this country for our client. At that point we can talk about it informally, address issues of bail, our client’s surrender, and what we might want to do about the extradition order.

We do very often fight cases all the way to the end and try to seek to have somebody ultimately permitted to remain in Canada and never be extradited out, but we are very careful to let our clients know that the Extradition Act is very heavily tilted against them. It is not like the criminal standard of proof that is ultimately very difficult to establish and creates all sorts of entitlements for an accused person. The Extradition Act primarily just greases the wheels of foreign jurisdictions that we have treaties with, and permits them to take our citizens from Canada and then prosecute them and provide whatever rights and entitlements they have within their local jurisdictions. Decisions really have to be made about what is the ultimate goal when you retain an extradition lawyer, because winning against an extradition order is very difficult. Often, the best strategy is to buy some time through the legal process while we work in parallel with lawyers in the foreign jurisdiction to address the underlying charge.

Read more about Extradition on CrimLawCanada.com.

—

If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with criminal law issues in the Toronto, Ontario Region, contact Adler Bytensky Prutschi for a consultation.