RCMP must repay cash taken in search

Judge rules man’s rights were violated

An Alberta judge has ordered authorities to reimburse a man whose money was confiscated by the RCMP under a controversial civil law, saying his rights were violated.

During a highway traffic stop two years ago, police seized money from Chad Squire using powers granted by civil legislation that allows them to seize property connected to criminal activity. But Justice Patrick Sullivan on March 21 ordered Squire’s money be returned, saying his rights to a lawyer and protection against unreasonable search and seizure were violated. Squire’s constitutional rights were breached in 2010, when police interrogated him and used Hogan, a sniffer dog, to search his pickup truck and seize $27,020 in cash, Sullivan said in his decision. “I find the police lacked an objective basis for the reasonable suspicion necessary to lawfully detain Mr. Squire for investigative purposes,” said Sullivan. Some of those in the legal community following the Squire case say Canadians should be worried by the civil forfeiture laws, introduced to a majority of provinces within the past decade. Karen Molle, a Calgary-based criminal lawyer, says the laws have yet to be refined by the courts and can be overreaching as a result. In 2010, Molle represented Patricia Thomson, a 74-year-old grandmother who, like Squire, had property illegally confiscated by police. In Thomson’s case, it was her condominium. “In effect, the act permits the Crown to go on a fishing expedition . . . which it would not be otherwise entitled to do,” said Justice Alan Macleod in the Thomson decision.

Such cases are “inevitable teething problems as law enforcement awaits further guidance from courts,” said Simon Young, the former appellate counsel at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

“For law enforcement, they need to recognize that simply because these laws are known as ‘civil’ forfeiture does not mean the usual criminal justice protections are thrown out the window.”