R. v. Ramsay, 2026 ONCJ 36

ONTARIO COURT OF JUSTICE

CITATION: R. v. Ramsay, 2026 ONCJ 36

DATE: January 23, 2026

COURT FILE No.: Brampton 23-31105303

BETWEEN:

His Majesty the King

— AND —

Timothy Ramsay

S. 8 Charter Ruling

Before Justice S. Caponecchia

Motion Heard on November 14, 2025

Parties advised of the result December 3, 2025

Reasons for Judgment released on January 23, 2026

R. Raeesi............................................................................................... counsel for the Crown

S. Lallman ................................................................ for the defendant Timothy Ramsay

CAPONECCHIA J.:

INTRODUCTION

1Timothy Ramsay stands charged with possession of child exploitation materials on April 12, 2023 and making them available on February 16, 2023, contrary to ss. 163.1(4) and 163.1(3) of the Criminal Code of Canada.

2The defence submits that the evidence to support the charges was obtained in a manner that infringed Mr. Ramsay’s right against unreasonable search and seizure, guaranteed by s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and seeks to have evidence excluded pursuant to s. 24(2) of the Charter. The defence also seeks a stay of proceedings pursuant to s. 24(1) of the Charter.

3A motion took place on November 14, 2025. The admissible evidence on this application consists of two judicial authorizations and their respective Information to Obtain, both sworn to by PC Imber.

4The grounds contained in the two Informations to Obtain can be briefly summarized as follows. Using a version of a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology called BitTorrent, the affiant established a connection to another device, whose user was using a BitTorrent client software, FrostWire/6.9.10. FrostWire is a P2P file sharing program. Police downloaded 431 suspected child exploitation materials from the suspect device on February 16, 2023. The Internet Protocol address (IP) used by the operator of the suspect device was in plain view to investigators. The first authorization granted on February 24, 2023 was a Production Order for the subscriber information for the IP address utilized by the suspect device to access the internet to use FrostWire. The second authorization granted on April 5, 2023, was a search warrant to seize devices located at the subscriber’s address on April 12, 2023.

5According to the defence, both authorizations were founded upon two pieces of unlawfully obtained evidence by the police. The defence first submits the police unlawfully seized the IP address used by the suspect device. Second, the defence submits that the police unlawfully searched and seized information from the suspect device when they established a direct connection to it and downloaded contraband materials.

6For reasons this court will proceed to explain, the s. 8 Charter application is dismissed. On the particular facts of this case, this court is not satisfied that the defendant enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy in the IP address he was using to operate FrostWire, nor the contents of the files he was sharing through the P2P program. Nor has the defence established a basis for granting a stay of proceedings pursuant to s. 24(1) of the Charter.

7These reasons will be broken down into three parts. The first addresses why a breach of s. 8 has not been established on a balance of probabilities by the defence. If my s. 8 conclusion is found to be in error, the second part of this decision explains why the evidence should not be excluded under s. 24(2) of the Charter. The third part of this decision addresses why the requirements for a stay of proceedings have not been met.

Part 1 – S. 8

8This ruling begins with a preliminary legal point. The Applicant is entitled to rely on the Crown's theory and ask the court to assume as true any fact that the Crown has alleged, or will allege, in the prosecution against them in lieu of tendering evidence probative of those same facts in the voir dire. Where the facts alleged by the Crown, if taken to be true, would establish certain elements of the applicant's s. 8 claim, an applicant need not tender additional evidence probative of those facts to make out those same elements. Although the entirety of the facts and the Crown theory may not be apparent at the time of the motion, the court may infer it from the nature of the charges.¹ In this case the Crown’s theory is Mr. Ramsay possessed and made child abuse materials available from a device in his possession that was equipped with the P2P program called FrostWire.

9In support of their legal argument, the defendant relies predominantly on two cases in which a reasonable expectation of privacy in an IP address was found to exist. The two cases are R. v. Bykovets, 2024 SCC 6 and R. v. Asantarajah, 2025 ONSC 1377.

10The Crown submits that Mr. Ramsay’s case is distinguishable from both cases. In support of their position the Crown relies on four cases. In those cases, no reasonable expectation of privacy was found to exist in an IP address displayed in plain view by users of a P2P file sharing program. In one case a court also found no reasonable expectation of privacy exists in a P2P users shared files. The cases the Crown referred the court to are R. v. Munro 2025 SKKB 20 at para 146; R. v. Tate [2025] B.C.J. No. 1435 at para 130; R. v. Hughes 2023 ONSC 109 at para 203-204; and R. v. Cofell, 2024 ONSC 7151 at para 176.

11This court’s analysis will begin with a consideration of the two cases relied on by the defence.

12First, the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Bykovets. The majority of the Supreme Court of Canada found that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in an IP address and that a request by the state for an IP address constituted a search.² Bykovets was a fraud investigation. The police knew someone had made online purchases of liquor-store gift cards using credit card data from several victims. The police obtained the IP address used to make these purchases by requesting it from Moneris, the payment processor for the transaction. Moneris had the IP address because it had been entrusted with it to allow the transactions to be completed. In other words, the information the police obtained from a third party, Moneris, was information that was not available to the public. Furthermore, it is ordinarily understood that when individuals engage in digital financial transactions, that is a private act known to the person one transacts with and a financial institution.

13This court is satisfied that the ruling in Bykovets is limited to the fact scenario that was before the court. This was made clear in the minority opinion which stated the following:

I mention in passing that if a third-party website were to spontaneously provide information without being asked, the reasonable expectation of privacy analysis -- which is always guided by "the totality of the circumstances" -- could well be different (cf. Reeves, at para. 46). That, however, is an issue for another day in a case where the situation actually arises on the facts.³ [emphasis added]

14Mr. Ramsay’s case is different to Bykovets. It does not involve a request by the state to a third party for an IP address. Whereas Mr. Bykovets provided his IP address to a financial intermediary in order to accomplish a private transaction, in Mr. Ramsay’s case his IP address was in plain view. Mr. Ramsay broadcasted his IP address, as well as the contents of his file sharing program to the world by using FrostWire. The Bykovets case pertained to private retail transactions, not P2P file sharing with strangers in a virtual public square.

15This brings the court to the second case relied on by the defence, R. v. Asantarajah, 2025 ONSC 1377. This case does not support the defence position for two reasons.

16For one, the subject matter of the enquiry was different. In Asantarajah Justice Schreck found that state action triggered s. 8 when Canadian police agencies accepted information, included an IP address, from the U.S. based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.⁴ Unlike in Asantarajah, the challenge to police conduct in Mr. Ramsay’s case does not involve the police seeking out, or receiving information, from a third party.

17Secondly, Justice Schreck made an important distinction that applies in Mr. Ramsay’s case:

The situation may well be different where an individual expressly makes his or her IP address and informational data publicly accessible to others, as in the case of peer-to-peer ("P2P") networks: R. v. Nguyen, 2017 ONSC 1341, at paragraph 46; R. v. Cofell, 2024 ONSC 7151, at paras. 134, 147; R. v. El-Halfawi, 2021 ONCJ 462, at paragraph 29. In such cases, where the state obtains an IP address associated to specific allegedly illegal material, it is simply doing something that any member of the public could do, which is accessing information the individual has chosen to make available. In this case [i.e., in Asantarajah], the evidence was that the IP addresses were not publicly available.⁵ [emphasis added]

18In addition to the cases referred to the court by the defence, this court is aware of one decision that supports the Applicant’s position. In R. v. Currie, 2024 BCPC 175[Currie] the court held that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their IP address when they use a P2P file sharing program. The evidence was nevertheless admitted under s. 24(2) of the Charter. This court notes that the trial judge in Currie appears to have extrapolated from Bykovets without having conducted an analysis of the circumstances of the case as required by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Tessling, 2004 SCC 67.

19This court finds the reasoning in the cases relied on by the Crown persuasive. No reasonable expectation of privacy was found in IP addresses that are in plain view when using a file sharing program. In R. v. Hughes [2022] O.J. No. 6036, Justice Boswell also decided that s. 8 is not engaged when police use software to establish a connection to another device and download suspected child exploitation materials being made available by someone using a P2P file sharing program.

20To summarize, I see the facts in this case as distinguishable from information held by corporate intermediaries (Bykovets) and reported to Canadian authorities either voluntarily or because of American law and otherwise not in plain view (Asantarajah). For reasons I will proceed to explain, I respectfully disagree with the conclusion reached in Currie. This court finds the analysis in the cases relied on by the Crown persuasive because unlike in Currie, a contextual analysis was conducted. In those cases, the courts found no reasonable expectation of privacy exists in an IP address that was in plain view and there is no reasonable expectation in files being shared with the public using a P2P program. It is therefore to the necessary contextual analysis of the facts in Mr Ramsay’s case that this court will turn to next.

REASONABLE EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY

21The Supreme Court of Canada has long recognized that a balance must be struck between an individual's privacy interests and concerns about safety, security and the suppression of crime. Since the purpose of s. 8 is the protection of privacy, searches and seizures have been defined to require an invasion by the state of a "reasonable expectation of privacy.”⁶

22The onus is on the claimant – Mr. Ramsay – to establish, on a balance of probabilities, that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy.⁷

23Whether a claimant has a reasonable expectation of privacy is a fact-specific and contextual inquiry. This assessment is made having regard to "the totality of the circumstances."⁸

24The totality of circumstances standard invites the court to consider a broad range of factors. Historically, these factors have generally been grouped into four lines of inquiry:

(a) What was the subject matter of the search?

(b) What was the nature of the claimant's interest in the subject matter?

(c) Did the claimant have a subjective expectation of privacy in the subject matter? And,

(d) Was the subjective expectation objectively reasonable, having regard to the totality of the circumstances? ⁹

25It is only if the last question is answered "yes" that the person will have standing to assert a s. 8 right.¹⁰

(a) The subject matter.

26In this case, the subject matter is the IP address and suspected child sexual abuse materials. The subject matter is highly revealing of the file sharer’s very personal sexual interests and preferences.

(b) The claimant’s interest in the subject matter.

27The IP address was registered to Mr. Ramsay’s father and their home address. This court accepts that the defendant had a direct interest in both the IP address he was using and the contents of the files he had in his P2P file sharing program.

(c) Does Mr Ramsay have a subjective expectation of privacy in the subject matter?

28In the absence of the claimant's testimony or admission at the voir dire, a subjective expectation of privacy can be presumed or inferred in the circumstances.¹¹

29In R. v. Mills, 2019 SCC 22, [2019] S.C.J. No. 22, the Supreme Court of Canada held that an internet child lurer had a subjective expectation of privacy in his communications with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. The lurer took steps to hide their conversations. He instructed the person he thought was the victim (but in reality was an undercover police officer) to delete his messages, including a picture of his erect penis. He used a different age. ¹²

30By contrast, in Marakah, the Supreme Court of Canada drew a distinction between the reasonable expectation of privacy that accompanies a private text conversation and those occurring in a public space such as messages posted on social media, conversations occurring in crowded Internet chat rooms or comments posted on online message boards.¹³

31In this case, users of the P2P file sharing programs are anonymous to one another. By virtue of the configuration of FrostWire, their IP address is in plain view to any stranger, like the police in this case. Likewise with respect to the contents of the files being shared using the same program. It is difficult to contemplate that a person using the P2P network in this case maintains a subjective expectation of privacy in either his IP address, or the files they are is sharing, with a virtual world of strangers.

32That said, Supreme Court of Canada in Marakah indicated that the threshold for establishing a subjective expectation of privacy is not a high hurdle.¹⁴ In this case, users of the P2P file sharing networks operate under a cloak of anonymity with one another. This court is therefore prepared to accept that Mr. Ramsay had a subjective expectation of privacy in both his IP address and the contents of his shared files in FrostWire.

(d) Was Mr. Ramsay’s expectation of privacy objectively reasonable?

33Whether a person has an objective expectation of privacy is assessed based on the "totality of the circumstances."¹⁵ Most s. 8 cases turn on the court's assessment of the reasonableness of the claimant's subjective expectation of privacy. This case is no different. This court is not persuaded that Mr. Ramsay’s expectation of privacy was objectively reasonable as it relates to both his IP address and the contents of the files he was sharing with the virtual public. I will explain.

34The "objective reasonableness" inquiry involves multiple factors.

i. The first is the place where the alleged search or seizure occurred.

35This has a specific meaning in the Internet context. In this case, the search occurred on a P2P network, which is a public network. The purpose of P2P networks is to allow users of the network to share files anonymously. A user of a P2P network can obtain data from another user's shared folder and vis a versa.

ii. The second factor is the extent of ownership, control or possession by the target of the search over the information.

36A claimant's control over the subject matter is not determinative in the informational privacy context.¹⁶ In this case Mr. Ramsay had no control or ownership over what IP address he was assigned by his internet service provider. Nor is there any evidence that Mr. Ramsay had any control over whether his IP address would be displayed by the P2P program he was using. There is no evidence on this application that Mr. Ramsay and FrostWire contracted into any type of confidential agreement.

37The P2P program Mr. Ramsay was using would have given him some control over when and what he shared with others. Whether he did so intentionally is a matter for trial.

iii. The third factor is the private nature of the information.

38Standing alone, there is nothing particularly revealing about a string of numbers that constitute an IP address. The collection of numbers do not disclose private information.¹⁷ The subscriber information for an IP address reveals only a name and an address. In this case the police did not want the IP address for its own sake, rather they wanted the subscriber information so that they might identify who was involved in making child sexual abuse materials available and where they might obtain a search warrant to seize suspect devices. In Spencer, the Supreme Court of Canada determined that a reasonable expectation of privacy attaches to subscriber information -- the name, address, and contact information -- associated with an individual Internet Protocol (IP) address.

39The child exploitation materials the police downloaded are innately private. They are being stored and shared under a cloak of invisibility and anonymity that the P2P filing sharing network affords its users.

iv. The fourth factor is whether the subject matter was in public view or abandoned.

40A person can have no reasonable expectation of privacy in what they knowingly expose to the public, virtual or otherwise. It is unreasonable to expect personal information to remain private in such a situation.¹⁸ Information obtained in the public domain, where it could be accessed by multiple people or the general public, is less likely to attract a reasonable expectation of privacy.¹⁹

41In this case, the IP address and the shared files were publicly available to anyone, including the police.

42Two courts have found an individual does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of shared folders on P2P networks: Justice Boswell in Hughes, and Justice North in R. v. El-Halfawi.²⁰ I agree. User of a P2P network will choose what files they possess and make available to the virtual public.

v. A fifth factor is whether the information was already in the hands of third parties.

43The significance of this factor depends on whether the third parties had a duty of confidentiality to the applicant. Individuals do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the knowledge that others have.²¹

44There is no evidence that Mr. Ramsay contracted with FrostWire to maintain his confidentiality. There is no evidence that users of FrostWire are subject to an obligation of confidentiality amongst themselves. By participating in a P2P network with people he had never met before and whose identities were unknown to him, Mr. Ramsay opened himself up to the risk that other users of the network were police officers or people who would report his activities to the police. Mr. Ramsay therefore could not have a reasonable expectation that anyone would keep anything that they saw, and what Mr. Ramsay was sharing, private.

vi. A sixth factor is the intrusiveness of the police technique.

45Was the technology used by police objectively unreasonable? In this case police used a commercially available version of TORRENT designed for law enforcement to establish a connection with a device that is making known contraband materials available. Police only accessed and downloaded suspected child abuse materials from the device that was sharing them. No more, no less. There is no evidence that the police accessed any other information on the suspect device. The police technique was neither intrusive, nor objectively unreasonable.

vii. An seventh factor to consider is whether the technique used directly exposed intimate details of the applicant's life or information of a "core biographical" nature.

46In this case the IP address is a string of numbers and letters that alone revealed nothing of an intimate nature, nor go to Mr. Ramsay’s “biographical core.” At most, it was capable of leading to the subscriber’s name and address (his dad’s) and his own.

47By contrast, the contents of the files being shared through FrostWire contains highly intimate details of Mr. Ramsay’s lifestyle preferences. Namely, an interest in child sexual abuse materials.

Conclusion on Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

48To summarize and conclude. Mr. Ramsay chose to participate in an anonymous, voluntary, file-sharing program where the public could see his IP address and draw from his shared files. The other users of the network were unknown to Mr. Ramsay. There is no evidence of any expectation of confidentiality amongst the users or the producers of the P2P network. Considering all the factors the court is obliged to weigh, this court is not persuaded that Mr. Ramsay had an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in either his IP address or the contraband materials that he made publicly available by using FrostWire.

49This conclusion regarding the “totality of the circumstances” is also informed by the analysis and outcome in three additional binding cases.

50First, the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Mills.²² The Supreme Court of Canada in Mills considered where the balance fell between an individual's interest in privacy and the state's interest in law enforcement in the context of child luring. The offender in Mills communicated with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. He went to meet the girl in a park for a sexual encounter. In fact, the 14-year-old girl was an undercover police officer. He was charged with child luring. The Supreme Court found that the offender's subjective expectation of privacy in their communications was not objectively reasonable. The offender knew he was communicating with a child who was a stranger.

51The majority in Mills held that whether the offender could demonstrate an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy was not merely a descriptive question. It was a normative question about when Canadians ought to expect privacy. The Internet allows for greater opportunities to exploit children. The protection of children is a vital societal interest. As a result, adults cannot expect privacy online with children that they do not know. The content-neutral approach to s. 8 had no application in a case of child luring.²³

52Second, R. v. Knelsen, 2024 ONCA 501. The subject matter of the search was text messages between a 27-year-old adult and a 15-year-old complainant. They were strangers. They texted and agreed to meet for sex. When they did so she became intoxicated. She was later found passed out on her front porch. She provided her cell phone to the police, who extracted all the text messages between her and the offender. The trial judge, following Mills, found that the offender's subjective expectation of privacy in their communications was not objectively reasonable.

53A similar result to Knelson was arrived at most recently in R. v. P.M. [2025] ONCA 208. In this sexual assault case, no reasonable expectation of privacy was found involving messages exchanged by a child and her adult uncle. The reasons for so finding included that a subjective expectation of privacy was not objectively reasonable in light of the societal interest in protecting children from sexual offences facilitated by electronic communications.

54This court also adopts the reasoning of Justice Goldstein in R.v. Bodden [2025] O.J. No. 2607 at paragraphs 91 and 92 as it relates to the application of the decision in Mills and Knelson to charges like the ones Mr. Ramsay is facing. Justice Goldstein observed that it would be illogical to find that a stranger communicating with a child for a sexual purpose has no expectation of privacy in those communications, but a person who keeps child sexual abuse materials in a file sharing program has an expectation of privacy in their IP address that is publicly displayed by a file sharing network.

55For all these reasons this court is not persuaded that Mr. Ramsay had an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in both subject matters of the search (his IP address and shared files). The protections afforded by s. 8 of the Charter are therefore not engaged. It follows that the information relied upon by police in this case to obtain the Production Order and search warrant for the subscriber’s house was lawfully obtained. There is no basis to excise anything in either of the ITOs. Both judicial authorizations are presumptively valid.

Part 2 – s. 24(2)

56Strictly speaking this court need not address the exclusion of evidence under s. 24(2) of the Charter. However, this court recognizes that the impact and application of the decision in Bykovets in other contexts remains the subject of continued legal debate. Therefore, this court will consider whether the evidence should be excluded in the event this s. 8 ruling is found to be incorrect by a reviewing court.

57Section 24(2) of the Charter requires an assessment of whether the exclusion of evidence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. This assessment is done upon consideration of the three factors established in R v Grant, 2009 SCC 32, [2009] 2 SCR 353 [Grant].

1. The seriousness of the Charter-infringing conduct.

58This first line of inquiry requires the court to situate the seriousness of the Charter-infringing state conduct in issue on a continuum between minor, technical or inadvertent breaches on one end and wilful or reckless disregard of Charter rights on the other. The closer the conduct lies to the more serious end of the continuum, the greater the need for the court to dissociate itself from it.²⁴

59Both the Production Order and search warrant in this case were obtained prior to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Bykovets and there is no suggestion that the police failed to conduct themselves in accordance with the law as it existed at the time. The police followed the well-established practices for investigating child exploitation material. The subscriber information for the suspect IP address was provided to the police by Rogers Communications pursuant to a judicially-authorized production order as required by R. v. Spencer, 2014 SCC 43 [Spencer]). The police proceeded in good faith based on the law as it stood prior to Bykovets when they sought both judicial authorizations. As indicated in Grant, if the authorities are acting in good faith as in this case, there is less need for the court to disassociate from that conduct.

60The police techniques were not intrusive. They did not access anything more than what was in plain view. They download only those files which were suspected child abuse materials that someone was sharing, no more, no less. Law enforcement in this case did not direct this information to be gathered on their behalf by a third party.

61This court finds that any Charter-infringing conduct in this case is minor and does not favour exclusion.

2. The second factor this court must consider is the impact of the breach on the Charter-protected interests of the accused.

62The second line of inquiry requires the court to consider the extent to which the breach undermined the interests protected by the rights infringed. This requires the court to identify the interests protected by the Charter right in question and to then examine how seriously they were affected.²⁵

63There was no impact on the applicant's Charter protected interests because the IP address and the files Mr. Ramsay shared were both in a virtual public square. The police seizure of the IP address was no different than police observing a residential address on the exterior of a house or a licence plate on a car being driven in public. The police download from Mr. Ramsay’s shared files is similar to an undercover officer meeting a suspect in a public place – whose legal identity is unknown – to acquire drugs from them.

64While anonymity is an important safeguard for privacy interests online, it is Mr. Ramsay who made his IP address public when he used FrostWire and gave strangers access to his files on the P2P network. The impact of any breach on Mr. Ramsay's Charter-protected interests is negligible.

65Standing in contrast to the search and seizure of Mr. Ramsay’s IP address and shared files, is the search of the Applicant's residence. Mr. Ramsay’s bedroom in his parent’s home, is a location in which he had a very high expectation of privacy. That being said, police entered pursuant to what they reasonably believed was a valid judicial authorization. The evidence does not show that law enforcement acted without regard for Mr. Ramsay’s rights.

63This second factor only minimally favours exclusion of the evidence.

3. The third factor is society's interest in the adjudication of the case on its merits.

64There is no dispute that the third factor favours admission of the evidence. Society has a strong interest in the adjudication of these types of case on their merits. Cases involving the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse materials would certainly rank among those of the highest priority from the public's point of view and its expectations of our justice system. Possessing and making child sexual abuse materials available causes profound harm, validates historical child abuse, and encourages future child abuse. Exclusion of the evidence would leave the prosecution with no case.

65To conclude the s.24(2) analysis. Where the first two lines of inquiry strongly favour exclusion, the third line of inquiry "will seldom tip the scale in favour of admissibility."²⁶ They do not in Mr. Ramsay’s case. In this case the first two factors neither independently, nor combined, tip the balance in favour exclusion. The third factor strongly favours admission of the evidence. Therefore, if there was a breach of Mr. Ramsay’s s. 8 Charter rights, the admission of the evidence would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

Conclusion s. 8

66A s. 8 Charter breach has not been made out. Mr. Ramsay did not have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in his IP address that was in plain view, nor in files that he was sharing with strangers in the virtual public square that is FrostWire, a P2P file sharing network. In the event there was a breach, I am satisfied that the admission of the evidence would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

67Mr. Ramsay's application to exclude evidence is dismissed.

PART 3 – s. 24(1)

68The written application filed in advance of this motion did not refer to any request for relief pursuant to s. 24(1) of the Charter. For the first time in oral submission the defence submitted that a stay of proceedings should be granted. The defence’s abuse of process application is based on the same grounds as the alleged s. 8 breaches: a blatant disregard for Mr. Ramsay’s rights by the police.

69The Crown’s position is the notice provision of the Rules of the Court for requesting relief under s. 24(1) were not followed and the application should be summarily dismissed.

70The law on abuse of process is well settled and most recently summarized by the Supreme Court of Canada in R v Brunelle, 2024 SCC 3, [2024] SCJ No 3. The key point is that abuse of process "refers to Crown conduct that is egregious and seriously compromises trial fairness and/or the integrity of the justice system." Two types of state conduct can meet the threshold for establishing an abuse of process: conduct that compromises trial fairness ("main category") and conduct that, without necessarily threatening the fairness of the accused's trial, nevertheless undermines the integrity of the justice system ("residual category").

71This court finds that the evidence on this motion does not support a stay of proceedings on either of the two-basis permitted by law. The application is therefore dismissed for failure to comply with the Rules regarding notice and for lack of merit.

Footnotes

1. 1R. v. Jones, 2017 SCC 60 at paras 9, 15-19, 32 [Jones].
2. 2R. v. Bykovets, 2024 SCC 6 at paras 14, 30, 92. [Bykovets]
3. 3Ibid at para 135.
4. 4This court notes that the issue Justice Schreck decided is not settled. There are several courts that have held differently. In R. v. Munro, 2025 SKKB 20 at paras. 42-45 and R. v. Tate 2025 SKKB 20 the courts held that no reasonable expectation of privacy arises in information provided by a non-state actor, and therefore s. 8 does not apply.
5. 5R. v. Asantarajah, 2025 ONSC 1377 at para 73. [Asantarajah]
6. 6Bykovets, supra note 2 at para 31.
7. 7R. v. Nolet, 2010 SCC 24, at para. 30.
8. 8R. v. Edwards, 1996 255 (SCC), [1996] 1 S.C.R. 128, at paras 31 and 45; R. v. Gomboc, 2010 SCC 55 at para 18.
9. 9R. v. Marakah, 2017 SCC 59 [Marakah] at para 11; R v Spencer, 2014 SCC 43 at paras 16-18 [Spencer], [2014] 2 SCR 212; R. v. Tessling, 2004 SCC 67 at para 19, 32 [Tessling].
10. 10Marakah, at para 12; R. v. El-Azrak, 2023 ONCA 440 at para 31.
11. 11Jones, supra note 1 at para 21.
12. 12R. v. Mills, 2019 SCC 22, [2019] S.C.J. No. 22. [Mills].
13. 13Marakah, supra note 9 at para 55.
14. 14Ibid at para 22.
15. 15Ibid at para 10.
16. 16Bykovets, supra note 2 at para 46.
17. 17R. v. Bykovets, 2020 ABQB 70 at para 55-56; R. v. Bykovets, 2022 ABCA 208 at para 21.
18. 18Tessling, supra note 9 at para 40.
19. 19R. v. J.J., 2022 SCC 28 at para 60.
20. 20R. v. Hughes [2022] O.J. No. 6036; R. v. El-Halfawi, [2021] OJ No. 4619 at paras. 85-88 at para 46.
21. 21R. v. Lambert, 2023 ONCA 689 at para 58.
22. 22Mills, supra note 12.
23. 23Ibid at para 20.
24. 24R v Grant, 2009 SCC 32, [2009] 2 SCR 353 [Grant] at paras 72-74; R. v. Beaver, 2022 SCC 54, 475 D.L.R. (4th) 575, at para 120; R. v. Le, 2019 SCC 34, [2019] 2 S.C.R. 692, at para 143.
25. 25Grant, supra note 25 at para 77; R. v. Tim, 2022 SCC 12 at para 90.
26. 26R. v. Lafrance, 2022 SCC 32 at para. 90; R. v. McGuffie, 2016 ONCA 365 at para 63.