A judge is weighing a father’s caregiving role against the seriousness of his part in a cocaine importation scheme from Ontario to Newfoundland.
A sentencing decision shaped by a child’s future
Justice Louis Strezos is weighing a question that makes this case harder than a standard drug sentence: whether prison for Steven Armstrong would leave his seven-year-old son without a parent able to care for him. Strezos has said a non-custodial sentence might help “break the cycle” for the boy. The court has not yet decided whether that concern can outweigh the seriousness of Armstrong’s role in a cocaine importation scheme.
Armstrong, from Newmarket, Ont., pleaded guilty to helping bring cocaine worth about $1 million into Newfoundland and Labrador during the pandemic. His co-conspirators were caught with 3.4 kilograms hidden in the airbag compartment of a Honda Ridgeline. At a Thursday hearing, Strezos asked whether the boy might repeat his father’s mistakes if incarceration made him a ward of the state. The judge called lawyers back to court for further questions before ruling.
The sentencing positions are far apart. Defence lawyer Adam Boni wants a conditional sentence of less than two years, effectively house arrest. Crown prosecutor Christopher Kalantzsis initially sought as much as seven years, then lowered that request to four to five years after learning what the other men received in Newfoundland.
Dion Wilson Lee Rodgers and Edmond Dorman Pickett denied the charges but were convicted by a jury in Gander. Rodgers was sentenced to 39 months in prison; Pickett received 34 months.
How the cocaine crossed the ferry route
The investigation began in 2018, when police noticed Armstrong making frequent, brief trips to the island on the Marine Atlantic ferry. Officers stopped him in 2019 but found no drugs. Investigators continued watching him into 2020 and learned he planned to bring a pickup truck to Newfoundland. Pandemic restrictions blocked his entry after the province went into lockdown in March.
By September, police had information that Armstrong was driving from Ontario toward the ferry terminal in Nova Scotia. At the Newfoundland end, officers saw Rodgers and his stepfather board a ferry. The stepfather later took the Honda Ridgeline back toward Newfoundland and was stopped. The first search found no drugs. A message intercepted between Rodgers and Armstrong pointed investigators to a passenger-side airbag compartment, where they found cocaine in a custom module with a hydraulic release.
A court case in central Newfoundland is drawing attention to how drugs travelled from Ontario into the province in 2020 via the Marine Atlantic ferry system. (Brittany Wentzell/CBC)
The case for and against prison
Armstrong has a lengthy criminal record. His most recent convictions before this case led to federal prison time in 2011. Kalantzsis described him as a “recidivist drug offender”; Boni argued that the record is old and carries less weight now.
The defence points to Armstrong’s conduct while on bail: he has not reoffended during the five years since the latest charges, Boni said, and caring for his son has changed his choices. Boni told the court the boy needs care only Armstrong can provide, and argued that their relationship has helped drive Armstrong’s rehabilitation.
Kalantzsis accepted that imprisonment would harm the child, but argued that the sentence must also reflect the gravity of the offence and Armstrong’s blameworthiness. Strezos pressed the point: the record before him, he said, was that the child could end up in group homes, exposed to some of the same pressures that contributed to Armstrong’s criminality. The judge said house arrest could offer a way to interrupt that pattern. Whether it can also meet the demands of sentencing remains unresolved.
Strezos is expected to deliver his decision on Nov. 12.
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