HALIFAX — A man who successfully argued his charter rights were violated when he was arrested with three kilograms of cocaine at Halifax airport four years ago has to stand trial again, Nova Scotia Appeal Court has decided.
The original trial judge ruled that Mandeep Singh Chehil’s charter rights were breached on Nov. 16, 2005, when WestJet workers allowed the RCMP to check his electronic ticket information, court documents say.
The Mounties asked to look at a number of passengers’ ticket information as part of Operation Jetway, a program the RCMP designed to ferret out drug runners leaving Vancouver on overnight flights bound for various destinations.
Jetway co-ordinators developed a “courier profile” of such smugglers, and police then zeroed in on anyone who bought a one-way ticket with cash at the last minute at the airline counter in Vancouver, court papers say.
Mounties at the Halifax airport wanted to check out any people who fit that profile, and when WestJet employees showed them the ticket information, Chehil, then 28 and of Surrey, B.C., was the last passenger on the list of those who had bought a ticket at the last minute.
His bag, along with those of nine others, was put aside for inspection by a drug-sniffing dog. The dog detected the cocaine in Chehil’s bag, the court documents state, and the traveller was arrested when he claimed the bag at the carousel.
Chehil argued during his trial that his rights were violated under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. The trial judge agreed and excluded the drug evidence. Chehil was subsequently acquitted.
The Crown appealed and a hearing was held Sept. 21, with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association having intervener status.
The Appeal Court ruled that a balance must be struck between privacy rights and protection of the public from crime. Protection of privacy under the charter “extends only to reveal intimate details about a person’s lifestyle and personal choices or meaningful information intended to be private and concealed and in relation to which there is a reasonable expectation of privacy,” the court decision said.
The Appeal Court didn’t accept Chehil’s contention that police violated his rights by looking at his ticket information. The court also said the trial judge erred because he didn’t consider the “totality of the circumstances test” in deciding whether Chehil had a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding his ticket information.
“Mr. Chehil undertook his transaction with WestJet in full public view,” the appeal decision states.
The court also pointed to WestJet’s legal and privacy policies that state there might be situations in which passengers’ personal information is provided to the authorities without their consent.
“As the Crown points out, the policy is a warning to passengers that any information maintained by WestJet is subject to disclosure to the authorities,” the decision states.
The court also noted that WestJet employees gave the information to the RCMP officers, who did not view it using “surreptitious means or intrusive technologies.” The Mounties did not have unlimited access to WestJet’s database, nor did they monitor passenger manifests continuously.
“There was a point-in-time inquiry about a particular flight,” the decision said, and police were merely using an investigative tool to find out if any potential drug smugglers were on that plane.
A date for Chehil’s second trial has yet to be set.