Supreme Court endorses monetary damages for breach of charter rights

OTTAWA — Canadians are entitled to monetary compensation when their charter rights are violated even if there has been no misconduct by authorities, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday.

In a unanimous decision, the nine justices upheld an award of $5,000 in damages against the B.C. government after a Vancouver lawyer was arrested and strip-searched in 2002 in the mistaken belief he intended to throw a pie at then-prime minister Jean Chretien.

The ruling said Alan Cameron Ward’s charter rights were breached in an “egregious fashion” when he was strip-searched at a jail operated by the province, and that compensation of $5,000 was an appropriate remedy.

“Strip searches are inherently humiliating and degrading, regardless of the manner in which they are carried out,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said in the written ruling.

Mr. Ward cheered the finding. “I’m relieved that the eight-year odyssey is over and I’m pleased with the decision,” he said in an interview from Vancouver.

Mr. Ward said the ruling is significant because it’s the first time the Supreme Court has said monetary compensation might be an appropriate remedy when someone’s charter rights have been violated.

By laying out conditions under which such financial compensation might be warranted, he added, it provides valuable guidance to lower courts.

The Supreme Court said monetary damages have to be proportional to the seriousness of the rights breach.

On that basis, it overturned a $100 judgment won by Mr. Ward in the lower courts as compensation for having his car towed as part of the police investigation. In its place, the Supreme Court substituted a declaration that the seizure violated Mr. Ward’s right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

“While the seizure was wrong, it was not of a serious nature,” McLachlin wrote, adding that the car was “never searched.”

Mr. Ward’s “odyssey” began on Aug. 2, 2002. Vancouver police received a tip that an individual — a white man in his 30s in a white and red t-shirt — intended to throw a pie at Chretien during a ceremony at the entrance to Vancouver’s Chinatown.

Based on his appearance, police mistakenly identified Mr. Ward as the would-be-pie-thrower, and chased him down and handcuffed him. Mr. Ward, who protested loudly, was arrested for breach of peace and taken to the police lockup where he stayed for 4 1/2 hours before being released without charge.

Ward sued the city and provincial governments. The trial judge ruled the city and province did not act in bad faith but that Mr. Ward’s charter right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure had been violated. Mr. Ward won damages of $100 for the car seizure and $5,000 for the strip search.

The two governments appealed, arguing that in the absence of misconduct or bad faith by authorities, the victim of a charter violation should win only a declaration to that effect, not financial compensation.

Mr. Ward said the ruling could have application in a variety of cases down the road.

“For example, if people prove their arrests at the G-20 (summit in Toronto) recently were violations of their charter rights, this case could have some application to that,” Mr. Ward said. “It could have some application to the case of someone who has been wrongly convicted and in prison for a period of time.”