Lower Standard Searches

• Author: Steve Coughlan/Alex Gorlewski
• Pages: 40-43

40 Police Powers / Search and Seizure / Search and Seizure with a Warrant

1.1(b)(iii) Lower Standard Searches

Type of warrant

Transmission

data warrant,

s 492.2

Tracking

warrant,

thing,

s 492.1(1)

Tracking

warrant,

person,

s 492.1(2)

Search

warrant,

s 487

Issued by

Justice of the

peace

Provincial

court judge

Superior court

judge1

Justice of the

peace

Provincial

court judge

Superior

court judge1

Justice of the

peace

Provincial

court judge

Superior

court judge1

Justice of the

peace

Provincial

court judge

Superior

court judge1

Standard Reasonable

suspicion2

Reasonable

suspicion2

Reasonable

grounds2

Reasonable

grounds2

Basic

requirements

Oence has

been or will be

committed3

Oence has

been or will

be committed3

Oence has

been or will

be committed3

Oence

has been

committed3

Additional

requirements 60-day limit460-day limit460-day limit4

Granted to Peace oicer

Public oicer5

Peace oicer

Public oicer5

Peace oicer

Public oicer5

Peace oicer

Public oicer5

The Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46 [Code] uses the standards for issuing a

search warrant as a benchmark for the degree of protection that needs to be

oered to suspects when the state seeks to obtain information about them.

When the investigative technique has a greater than normal impact on privacy

interests, more protections are oered (see Chart 1.1(b)(v), Higher Standard

Searches), and when the technique has less of an impact on privacy, fewer pro-

tections are oered. This chart demonstrates the relationship between search

warrants (s 487, permitting searches of a building, receptacle, or place), trans-

mission data warrants, and tracking warrants. Note that the Code’s tracking

warrant provisions were amended in 2015 to provide for two dierent circum-

stances: tracking things (such as a vehicle) and tracking a person. Where all

tracking warrants used to require only the lower justication of reasonable

suspicion, tracking a person now requires the s 487 “reasonable grounds to be-

lieve” standard. See, generally, the discussion in Steve Coughlan, Criminal Proce-

dure, 3d ed (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2016) at ch 4, s C(1)(b)(iv), Other Statutory Search

Warrant Provisions, and s C(2)(b)(i), Was the Law Itself Reasonable: General.