The defendant in a sexual assault case brought a motion for directions under s. 278.1 of the Criminal Code to determine the admissibility of Facebook messages exchanged with the complainant.
The court had to decide if the messages contained personal information for which the complainant had a reasonable expectation of privacy, making them presumptively inadmissible.
The court found that two of the three sets of messages met this definition, while one mundane chat did not.
The ruling clarified the factors for assessing privacy expectation, rejecting the relevance of the current adversarial relationship and broad policy implications at the initial definitional stage.
