On January 18, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal issued a significant judgement on Crown liability for costs on an application to quash a search warrant.
The Court held that the Crown in Right of Canada ought not to be liable for costs of on an application to quash an “ill-conceived and poorly executed” search warrant obtained and executed by the Canada Revenue Agency. It reached this conclusion because a Crown Attorney was not involved in the impugned investigation but, rather, had simply responded to the application to quash.
The Court also said that it did not matter the CRA is a deemed agent of the Crown under the Canada Revenue Agency Act because the basis for an award of costs is rooted in the special role of the Crown as prosecutor:
The basis of this general rule is not that the prosecutor might be an agent of the Crown and that an investigator might not be. The general rule is not based on the law of agency, but on strong reasons of public policy which I have already described, and which have been set out in the cases on many occasions: see, for example, Foster, supra at ¶ 62-65; and Ciarniello, supra, at ¶ 31-36. Whether by virtue of ss. 4(2) of the CRAA, the investigator here was or was not an agent of the Crown (a point I need not decide) does not change the general legal principle applicable to costs against the Crown in criminal matters.
The underlying facts involved a search based on a flawed Information and in which the CRA had seized records subject to solicitor-client privilege contained on computer and electronic storage devices.
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