The appellants, a newspaper and its journalists, received an allegedly forged document from a confidential source implicating the Prime Minister in a conflict of interest.
The police obtained a search warrant and assistance order to seize the document and its envelope to identify the source through forensic testing.
The appellants challenged the warrant, claiming a constitutional or common law journalist-source privilege.
The Supreme Court of Canada held that while s. 2(b) of the Charter does not provide a blanket constitutional immunity for journalists, a case-by-case privilege may be established using the Wigmore criteria.
On the facts, the public interest in investigating the serious crime of forgery outweighed the public interest in protecting the confidential source.
The search warrant and assistance order were upheld as reasonable under s. 8 of the Charter.
