The Crown sought to qualify a York Regional Police detective as an expert witness to provide opinion evidence regarding marijuana production, distribution, trafficking, pricing, and related matters.
The defence objected on grounds of bias, arguing that the proposed expert had conducted surveillance prior to the search warrants and was from the same police unit as the principal investigators.
The trial judge applied the four-part Mohan test and the Abbey framework, finding that while the expert met the threshold requirements, certain portions of the report were inadmissible due to bias concerns and case-specific opinions that could usurp the trier of fact's role.
