Case information

None.

Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

Criminal law (Non Charter) - Appeals - Post-conviction production of third party documents - Whether the Court of Appeal for Ontario erred in law in holding that records in the possession of the police as part of a criminal investigation were not records to which a reasonable expectation of privacy attaches - Whether the Court of Appeal erred in concluding that the third party record regime set out in R. v. O’Connor was not engaged and the records were subject to disclosure - R. v. O’Connor, [1995] 4 S.C.R. 411.

The Respondent Lawrence McNeil was convicted of various drug-related offences. On appeal, he brought an O’Connor application to obtain records in the hands of the Appellant Attorney General of Ontario and the Respondent Barrie Police Service relating to criminal charges and police discipline proceedings against the police officer who arrested him. All of the prosecutions were conducted by the Respondent Attorney General of Canada who had not seen the records and resisted their production. The Respondent Barrie Police Service also resisted the production of the documents, claiming a privacy interest. The Court of Appeal held that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in many of the records in question and thus, O’Connor did not apply and these records were to be disclosed, with conditions.