The Crown and the Ontario Provincial Police applied for certiorari to quash a provincial court disclosure order requiring production of records related to an Intoxylizer 8000C breath testing device in impaired driving prosecutions.
The lower court had ordered disclosure of calibration, maintenance, usage logs, prior subject test records, and samples of the alcohol standard solution used in breath testing.
The applicants argued the police should have been treated as a third party and given notice and an opportunity to be heard, and that the disclosure order conflicted with expert evidence about the relevance of the records.
The court held that the police possessed a direct interest in the records and should have been afforded an opportunity to make submissions on whether the materials constituted third party records.
The order was quashed and the matter remitted to the Ontario Court of Justice for reconsideration of the disclosure regime with participation from the police.
