PRIVACY AND THE CHARTER: PROTECTION OF PEOPLE OR PLACES?

Abstract

A right to privacy is firmly established in section 8 of the Charter. By contrast, though the Supreme Court has suggested on numerous occasions that section 7 touches privacy issues, it has never clearly accepted a right to privacy in section 7. The result is the anomalous situation of a constitutional right to privacy whose stated purpose is the broad promise of protecting “people, not places,” but which in practice applies mainly to the spatial aspects of searches and seizures and barely implicates personhood concerns at all. This article examines the history of privacy in both section 8 and section 7, and argues that expanding privacy into section 7 will allow the right to privacy to deal seriously with persons and not just places.