Lesley Campbell

A school board principal accessed and photographed private communications stored on a cloud-based personal log that was open on a board-owned laptop.

The teachers' union grieved the resulting written reprimands, alleging a breach of privacy rights.

A labour arbitrator dismissed the grievance applying the arbitral balancing-of-interests framework without conducting a s. 8 Charter analysis.

The Supreme Court held unanimously that the Charter applies to Ontario public school boards under the first branch of the Eldridge framework, as public education is an inherently governmental function.

The majority held the arbitrator fatally erred by failing to apply the s. 8 framework, and quashed the award.

The concurring minority would have applied a reasonableness standard and found the arbitrator's reliance on the contents of the log to assess the biographical core was unreasonable.

The appeal was dismissed with costs.

This appeal concerned whether public school teachers are protected from unreasonable search and seizure by section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms when the search is performed in the workplace by their employers.

The case involved a school principal reading and taking screenshots of a private, password-protected log maintained by two teachers on their personal Google account, accessed via a workplace laptop, which was then used by the school board for disciplinary action.

The Court of Appeal found that the labour relations arbitrator and the Divisional Court erred in their interpretation and application of section 8, concluding that the teachers had a reasonable expectation of privacy in their log, which was violated by the principal's actions.

The appeal was allowed, and the arbitrator's award was quashed.

The applicant, a minority shareholder, brought a motion to strike certain paragraphs from the respondent's affidavit in an oppression application.

The court struck paragraphs containing legal argument and conclusions, finding them inappropriate for an affidavit.

However, the court deferred the decision on paragraphs challenged for relevance and character impugnment to the judge hearing the main application, emphasizing that relevance is best assessed in the full context of the application.