Nearly 11 months after he was busted for trafficking crystal methamphetamine and cocaine, Trent Oliynyk has been sentenced.
A number of charges, including trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking and weapons charges, ultimately resulted in a five-year sentence, minus 469 days, in federal penitentiary. The 469 days takes into account time served in remand counting as 1.5 days, which is dictated in the criminal code.
A DNA order, a 10-year firearms prohibition and surcharges were also imposed.
Media received a press release from RCMP in December 2017 in which four individuals, including Oliynyk and Graham Baptiste, were arrested. Oliynyk and Baptiste were charged with trafficking drugs and other weapons offences. Oliynyk faced 22 charges.
At Oliynyk’s sentencing Oct. 19 at North Battleford Provincial Court, Crown lawyer Denis Quon told the story of undercover police buying drugs from Oliynyk on two separate incidents leading to Oliynyk’s arrest. Locations Quon mentioned in the process of the transactions included Boston Pizza and Canadian Tire parking lots.
According to Quon, Oliynyk was selling soft cocaine for $1,500 an ounce, and crystal meth for $900 an ounce. At one point, Oliynyk offered to smoke meth with the undercover, but the undercover declined.
Police later searched Oliynyk’s residence and found drugs, firearms and money.
Defence counsel George Combe, a Saskatoon lawyer, said Oliynyk’s criminal record began in 2005 but there was a 12-year gap until 2017.
Before selling drugs, Oliynyk ran a trucking business “and was actually doing quite well,” Combe said.
“Then like anything else, things fall off the rails,” Combe said, adding Oliynyk lost the business.
Graham Baptiste passed away in April. Charges were stayed.
Combe said other drug dealers who operated as Oliynyk don’t do drugs, but added Oliynyk was a meth addict at the time who also used cocaine. Addiction, Combe argued, was Oliynyk’s “real problem,” and characterized Olinyk as a “drug addict who was trying to supplement his habit by selling drugs.”
Combe argued Oliynyk was an easy target for police.
Oliynyk was initially sent to Saskatoon Correctional Centre until he was moved to a jail in Regina, according to Combe, due to renovations at the Saskatoon jail. Combe said in Regina, Oliynyk spent much time in lockup and without programming.
Combe said Oliynyk doesn’t want to be in jail again and wants to move forward with his life, adding Oliynyk wants programming and counselling and to be in a more legitimate business after release.
“He’s been a dismal failure in the drug trade,” Combe said.
Combe said Oliynyk wanted to resolve matters from the beginning. In negotiations, Combe said his position was five years while the Crowns’ “was much higher.”
In characterizing the Crown’s dealings, Combe said “they basically tell you what their price is and how many years they’re looking for.”
“To try to get them to sway off that, to try to resolve the matter without [getting] to the trial phase is not the easiest.”
Ultimately, the five-year sentence minus time served came from a joint submission by Crown and defence. Combe said five years in jail was on the “low end of the range, but still within range.”
Judge Lloyd Deshaye said matters had been carefully addressed by Crown and defence counsel, and said he was grateful to the lawyers for resolving the matter.
Deshaye said he didn’t have a pre-sentence report, which goes over an offender’s history, but said Oliynyk’s personal situation was addressed.
Regarding sentencing, Deshaye said circumstances vary and there aren’t a fixed number of years of imprisonment for individual cases.
“There is no pure science to this issue of imposing appropriate sentences, and it is sometimes said it is more of an art than a science,” Deshaye said. “There is always going to be flexibility involved except for mandatory minimum sentences.”
Deshaye said he followed the joint submission because he didn’t have “an adequate reason not to,” and because according to “law in our jurisdiction,” if experienced counsel presents a joint submission, the court should accept it, unless it is far beyond “an acceptable, appropriate range.”
Other cases in the local jurisdiction, Deshaye said, are taken in pieces. Rather than concurrent sentences for the offences (as some of Oliynyk’s were), Oliynyk would be looking at approximately a minimum two and a half to three years for each offence to be served consecutively.
Deshaye commented on Combe’s characterization of negotiations.
“Sentencing negotiations, I would suggest, are not like NAFTA negotiations,” Deshaye said. “It’s not as though we’ve got ambassadors trying to shake something out for mutual benefit. In a way it is that way, but there is a lot of things that are involved in […] making sentencing negotiations,” adding he had no role in such negotiations.
Deshaye said he was told Oliynyk saved the Crown effort and doing so was a motivation from early on.
In concluding comments, Deshaye said drugs are “one of the most evil and nefarious parts” of society.
“Trafficking of drugs and use of drugs is a scourge [and] a very dangerous thing that happens in our community,” Deshaye said.
“We hear all the time about people who have ruined their own lives [and others’] by making people into addicts, where they become less productive and often become a real burden to society,” adding such people then often commit crimes while under the influence, and to support the habit.”
