THE Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear the federal government's appeal of a case involving a North Vancouver weapons dealer.
The case concerns whether taking away the chance for early parole for people who have already been sentenced violates their rights by subjecting them to double jeopardy or extra punishment.
Previously, both the B.C. Court of Appeal and B.C. Supreme Court ruled that it does.
In the most recent decision, a panel of three appeal court justices agreed with a North Vancouver man and two other inmates that a Conservative law abolishing early parole amounted to additional punishment after sentencing and shouldn't be allowed.
At the time he launched his constitutional challenge to the law, Christopher John Whaling, 43, was serving a sentence at the minimum security Ferndale Institution, after being convicted of three gun offences in September 2010.
Whaling, who used to be a verifier for the Canadian Firearms Registry, was nabbed five years ago as part of a police investigation into a large-scale gun-trafficking ring in the Lower Mainland.
When police searched Whaling's North Vancouver home on East Keith Road under warrant, they found a large quantity of unregistered firearms, including two 45-calibre handguns - one of which was loaded - and a MAC-10 automatic pistol, as well as machine guns in various stages of completion.
He also had a gun similar to an AK-47 that he had converted into a fully automatic weapon and stashed in a box in the woods near Squamish.
In September 2010, Whaling was sentenced to four and a half years in jail.
Because he was a first-time federal offender serving a sentence for non-violent offences, Whaling was entitled to apply for accelerated day parole, which allows offenders to be released on parole after just one-sixth of their sentence.
But when the federal government's new law abolishing accelerated parole came into effect, in March of 2011, Whaling got a letter saying he was no longer eligible for the program.
Whaling was later let out of jail on bail pending the appeal of his conviction.
He fought and won his case in B.C. Supreme Court, where a judge struck down the parts of the new law that applied to people who had already been sentenced for their crimes, saying it amounted to additional punishment.
The Attorney General of Canada had asked the Supreme Court of Canada to put that decision on hold until the final resolution of the case, but the court refused.
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