The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down the federal government’s one-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession and accessing child pornography, ruling that the penalty violates the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The decision upholds a 2023 judgment from the Quebec Court of Appeal that found the law unconstitutional under section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The appeal stemmed from two separate criminal prosecutions in Quebec, both of which involved men who had hoarded massive amounts of child sexual exploitation files.
The first case related to a 28-year-old soldier named Louis-Pier Senneville who was convicted of possessing and accessing child pornography. Evidence presented at trial showed that Senneville had amassed a digital collection of 317 images, 90% of which depicted children between roughly three and six years old.
The images were of a highly sadistic nature, and were described in court as featuring depictions of the toddlers being sodomized and violated. During his 2018 trial, Senneville claimed that his motivation for hoarding the images was that he had intended to track down the men responsible for creating them as a “vigilante.” The prosecution easily poked holes in his defense, noting that he had accumulated and accessed the files over the course of 13 months and had never made a single complaint to police.
Senneville later pleaded guilty, expressed remorse, and participated in therapy while awaiting sentencing.
Despite there being a one-year minimum sentence, Judge Tremblay of the Court of Québec sentenced Senneville to just 180 days in jail, to be served intermittently on weekends, along with two years of probation and a 20-year order requiring registration as a sex offender. Tremblay refused to apply the one-year mandatory minimum, deciding that it was unconstitutional and stating it would impose punishment “disproportionate” to Senneville’s circumstances.
Judge Tremblay described Senneville as “genuinely remorseful” and claimed that he had no “pedophilic or hebephilic sexual interests” despite hoarding the trove of child pornography.
In the second case, Mathieu Naud was convicted of possessing and distributing child pornography under the same Criminal Code provisions in 2020.
Police investigators found 531 image files and 274 videos on Naud’s devices depicting children between approximately five and ten years old being raped. Naud had attempted to hide the evidence of his crimes, and used specialized software to conceal it, access it, and make it available to others.
Judge Dalmau of the Court of Québec similarly refused to apply the mandatory minimum one-year sentence, and instead imposed consecutive sentences of nine months for possession and eleven months for distribution, plus two years’ probation, mandatory therapy, a DNA order, and sex-offender registration. Dalmau justified the reduced sentence by describing Naud as having “low self‑confidence, a tendency to be avoidant, an inability to define his identity and a defeatist attitude.”
The Attorney General of Quebec appealed both Senneville and Naud’s sentences to the province’s highest court, arguing that Parliament’s mandatory minimum reflected the seriousness of crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors and that uniform penalties were necessary for deterrence and denunciation.
In June 2023, the Quebec Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in 2023 QCCA 731, holding that the mandatory minimums for possession and accessing child pornography were unconstitutional because they could capture “lesser” offenders, such as first-time offenders who possessed small collections or teenagers who sent intimate images of themselves to other teenagers, and compel sentences far harsher than appropriate.
Taking its case to the Supreme Court of Canada, the province of Quebec urged the reinstatement of the minimum, maintaining that child exploitation crimes demanded automatic imprisonment of at least one year to reflect societal condemnation. But Defense counsel and several interveners, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, countered that the law was too broad, creating potential for extreme injustice in marginal cases.
The Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts, finding that while the offenses are serious, the mandatory minimum prevents judges from imposing “proportionate punishment tailored to each offender.” While acknowledging that child pornography offenses are among the most serious in the Criminal Code, the justices concluded that Parliament’s fixed one-year minimum risked being “grossly disproportionate” in rare or hypothetical cases. The Court insisted that sentencing must remain flexible enough to consider “the circumstances of the offender,” even in crimes of clear moral gravity.
The ruling, which was published just hours ago, has drawn sharp criticism from legal observers and victims’ advocates who argue it weakens accountability for crimes involving child sexual abuse material, and has sparked a wave of backlash on social media from Canadians outraged at the decision.
“Enough. This is immoral and insane,” wrote Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel Garner, while Member of Parliament Frank Caputo wrote: “My heart goes out to victims today.”
It should no longer be controversial to say “I do not respect the judicial authority of the SCC.”
— Andrea Micieli (@AndreaMicieli) October 31, 2025
What a disgrace. https://t.co/XsqdJSqyAH
The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision echoes a similar judicial controversy that erupted in Germany last year.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Germany’s Parliament (Bundestag) voted in 2024 to amend its Criminal Code, effectively removing provisions that classified possession of child sexual-abuse material as a felony and substantially reducing the minimum sentences for related offenses.
Like with the reasoning advanced before Canada’s Supreme Court, the German government justified the reform on the basis of ensuring “proportionality” and “judicial discretion” in sentencing. Officials cited situations such as parents or teachers who accessed illicit material to report it to police, or teenagers exchanging explicit content among themselves, as examples of cases where rigid minimum penalties could lead to unfair convictions.
🚨Germany's Parliament has officially voted to decriminalize the possession of child pornography.
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) May 21, 2024
The move is being celebrated by a "pedophile rights" activist group which has also called for the age of consent to be dropped to 12.https://t.co/JtUNA4wgZg
However, instead of creating narrow exemptions for such limited circumstances, lawmakers opted to broadly reclassify possession of child pornography as a lesser offense, a decision that drew immediate international controversy.
The change was publicly welcomed by a fringe pro-pedophile activist organization known as Krumme-13, which has long campaigned for the normalization of adult-child sexual contact. The group issued statements online praising the Bundestag’s move as a “step forward,” prompting backlash from child-protection advocates and legal experts who warned that the reform risked weakening deterrence for serious sexual-exploitation crimes.
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