Lawyer Cameron Ward certainly deserved an apology for an improper strip search by police eight years ago, but was it really necessary to pay him $5,000 as compensation?
The Supreme Court of Canada thinks so. Noting the need to redress the breach of Ward’s s. 8 rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the need to deter similar actions by police, the court laid out criteria for awarding compensation in such cases.
They include proving the breach, showing why damages are a just and appropriate remedy, and a rejection of any countervailing factors against compensation that the state might raise.
Ward’s matter dates back to 2002, when Vancouver police arrested him on suspicion that he was the white male in his early 30s with short, dark hair wearing a white shirt with some red on it who was reportedly about to throw a pie at former prime minister Jean Chrétien at an event in Chinatown. Ward had longer, grey hair but was wearing clothing that matched the suspect’s description.
He was running at the time police noticed him. Officers then arrested him and took him into custody. During that time, they strip-searched him but didn’t touch him or force him to take off his underwear.
Eventually, they let him go after concluding they had no evidence to charge him for attempted assault, according to the court’s ruling.
While judges ruling in the case noted police didn’t act in bad faith, their actions were obviously improper.
But awarding damages, especially where the search was, as in the case, relatively low on the invasiveness scale, goes a bit too far.
Police countered that doing so ignores the realities and complexities of doing their jobs, a fact that raises legitimate concerns over whether the ruling will introduce a chill into officers’ work in conducting investigations in addition to opening the doors to other costly complaints about their conduct.
The court thought otherwise, of course, while the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association intervening in the case emphasized the role of compensation - rather than simply declaring a breach but ordering no other remedy - as key to deterring police misconduct.
That may be true, but the fact remains that there are lots of ways of reining in police officers, including civilian complaints processes and internal disciplinary proceedings.
Another important point is that Ward himself has said all he ever wanted was an apology. His province, in fact, has had an Apology Act for a few years, meaning the government would have been wiser to take advantage of its own legislation to say sorry without admitting civil liability instead of dragging the case through multiple levels of court and, ultimately, losing.
The whole matter, then, is unfortunate and unnecessary for possibly having created a new framework for compensating people over police behaviour when other avenues already exist.
While the court’s ruling is important for having acknowledged the breach of Ward’s rights, the low level of invasiveness of the search and lack of bad faith on the part of police should have led it to conclude otherwise on the question of compensation.
