In June , members of the Guelph Police Service Drug Unit executed a search warrant at the residence of a known drug dealer, G, and arrested him trying to leave in a car. During the arrest, G threw two cellphones onto the passenger seat. One of the officers lawfully seized the cellphones incident to arrest. Little did Campbell know, the responses he received were from police, impersonating G in order to stop the drugs from being trafficked in the community.
The police did not have a warrant to search the text messages. Blair, an experienced drug investigator, believed the texts involved a drug transaction in progress. Two other officers also suspected the drugs involved heroin with fentanyl, based on the price and confidential informant information.
Blair believed the accused had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the texts sent to G's phone and instructed an officer to respond to arrange a drug delivery. Over the next 2 hours, 35 texts were exchanged directly from the lock screen, without examining any other information on the cellphone. The accused arrived at the agreed-upon location shortly after p.
Police seized his cellphone and photographed the screen to capture the text message conversation, and subsequently obtained warrants to search and download the data from the two phones. The accused argued that his section 8 Charter rights against unlawful search and seizure were infringed when police took control of another drug dealer's phone and facilitated a transaction through text.
The trial judge found that the accused did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the text messages, and therefore lacked standing to argue section 8 of the Charter.
