Cocaine smuggler challenges end of accelerated parole

CONSTITUTION: Former border guard says changes dramatically increase his sentence

A former border guard who was sentenced to 15 years in jail for a cocaine conspiracy says his rights have been violated by Ottawa’s abolition of accelerated parole.

In July, Baljinder Singh Kandola was incarcerated after being convicted along with another man of smuggling $5 million worth of cocaine into Canada.

Kandola, who was also convicted of breach of trust and corruption, committed the offences between May 2006 and October 2007.

In March 2011, Parliament abolished accelerated parole, applying its action to all offenders who had not already been so released, whether the sentencing occurred on, before or after the enactment of the new law.

As a first-time, non-violent, federal offender, Kandola would have been eligible for release on accelerated parole after serving one-sixth of his sentence, or about 2½ years.

But without accelerated parole, he’ll have to wait until January 2017 before he can seek day parole.

In June, the B.C. Supreme Court partially struck down the new law to the extent that it applied to offenders sentenced before March 2011.

An appeal of that decision was launched, and in October the B.C. Court of Appeal reserved its decision and declined to order a stay of the ruling.

In a notice of claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court, Kandola seeks to have the remaining portions of the law declared unconstitutional and of no force and effect.

He claims the new law has wrongly extended his parole ineligibility and amounts to punishment because it increases the harshness of his sentence, violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

No response has been filed to the notice of civil claim. A spokeswoman for the Attorney-General of Canada, which is the named defendant, said they had not yet been served on the litigation and therefore had no comment.