Justice Minister Peter MacKay lauded the ruling. “That decision to me seems to strike the exact balance that Canadians would expect when it comes to protecting the privacy rights, while at the same time putting moderate tools in the hands of police to protect Canadians when it comes to their investigations,” he told reporters.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly objected to the Conservative government’s tough crime laws in the past three years. Its approach to cellphone searches is in contrast to that of the United States Supreme Court; it ruled last summer that police need a warrant to search cellphones as part of an arrest.
The minority on the Canadian court said the majority have given the police “extraordinary power,” tossing the phrase back at their colleagues. Searches may go on endlessly in a seized phone, which can continue to generate evidence long after the arrest, Justice Andromache Karakatsanis wrote, joined by Justice Rosalie Abella and Justice Louis LeBel. Justice Karakatsanis was the only judge appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the minority. Chief Justice McLachlin was the only non-Harper appointee in the majority.
Benjamin Berger, a law professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, said the court is softening rights protections. He pointed to the first search-and-seizure ruling under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the 1984 case Hunter v. Southam, when the Supreme Court said that warrantless searches are inherently unreasonable. “Those strong rights protections of the early Charter years are very firmly in the rear-view mirror.”
The court has taken a strong stand in other recent cases for the privacy of personal computers. It ruled last November that a police warrant for a house search in a marijuana grow-op case did not give the police the power to search computers or cellphones found in the house, unless a judge had specifically given permission to police to do so.
