convictions under Canada's murder laws?

Jefferson's answer isn't completely off base, but nor is it completely right, either: We don't use the term "felony" in Canada at all.

There are detailed provisions in the Criminal Code of Canada specifying when murder is 'first degree'. The most common is when it is premeditated. However, first degree murder also includes a murder committed while committing or attempting to commit one of a number of other crimes: Hijacking an aircraft; sexual assault (and aggravated sexual assault, and sexual assault with a weapon); kidnapping and forcible confinement; or hostage taking. Also, it's first degree if the murder is committed in the course of criminal harassment or intimidation, for the benefit of organized crime, or where the victim is a police officer.

Second-degree murder is defined as any 'murder' that is not first-degree.

What constitutes 'murder' is another nuanced question. Murder *usually* means that the offender intended to cause death (or intended to do something likely to cause death and was reckless to whether or not death ensued), but also includes culpable homicide in the commission of certain offences (the same as those listed above, plus sabotage, piracy, escape from lawful custody, robbery, b&e, and arson) IF the offender intended to cause bodily harm or administers a "stupefying or overpowering thing" for the purpose of facilitating the offence or facilitating escape after committing the offence, or if he stops the victim from breathing. In the recent Dickson trial, the defence acknowledged that he sexually assaulted the victim and she ended up dead, but argued that it was manslaughter, and that the criteria for murder weren't met. The jury didn't buy it.

The Boothe case - the one you mention in Brampton - has shades of the Jeffrey Baldwin murder, which ultimately resulted in second-degree murder convictions, but an acquittal on the first-degree murder charge. That was probably wrong: The forcible confinement aspect of it likely should have made it first degree, but the trial just imposed life with no chance of parole for 20 years (22 years against one of them), which is pretty close to the penalty which would have been imposed for first degree murder.

In the first case the death was a result of a forciable felony. This is the Felony Murder Rule. The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder in two ways. First, when an offender kills accidentally or without specific intent to kill in the commission of a felony, the offender can be charged with murder. Second, it makes any participant in such a felony criminally liable for any deaths that occur during or in furtherance of that felony.

In the second case the death was not planned. Second-degree murder is ordinarily defined as: 1) an intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned, nor committed in a reasonable "heat of passion"; or 2) a killing caused by dangerous conduct and the offender's obvious lack of concern for human life.