SNIFFER-DOG RULING COULD HAVE LARGER IMPLICATIONS

So now the fact that a student in school has illegal drugs in his/her
schoolbag is not sufficient reason to ask the student to open the bag?

Having effective methods for detecting drugs that kill our children
is a good thing and we should use them. But now the police cannot use
sniffer dogs because it constitutes an "unreasonable search." Tell
that to a friend of mine, the mother of a boy who was found dead last
summer from crystal meth at the age of 23.

Imagine this: an angry young man takes an Uzi submachine gun to
school, copying many past incidents of school murder in the United
States and Canada. The police cannot ask him to open his bag, even
though a specially trained dog indicates that there is a dangerous
weapon in his bag.

Now a terrorist with a suicide bomb pack enters the LRT or a movie
theatre to detonate the bomb in a crowd. A dog sniffs the explosives
but, according to the Supreme Court, the police cannot stop him.
After all, if they did not have a sniffer dog, the man would have
looked like anyone else. That is like saying, "If you did not know
that he had a bomb, you would have had no reason to ask to see the
bomb." It would be an "unreasonable search" even though the dog tells
the police with virtual certainty that he is guilty of carrying
illegal explosives with intent to detonate them.

Imagine that a terrorist has a nuclear explosive. A Geiger counter
posted in a gas station detects the radiation. However, the police
cannot stop the terrorist's truck in the countryside, where there are
few people. As a Canadian citizen, he is entitled not to be searched
without "reasonable suspicion". The fact that a good detection device
makes it almost 100 per cent certain that the person is breaking the
law is not sufficient reason. If they did not have the detection
device, the terrorist would have looked like anyone else.

As a consequence of the Supreme Court decision, we should now feel
less secure that the police can protect us from drug deaths in our
children, mass shootings in schools, suicide bombs in crowded places
and a nuclear bomb destroying a city like Ottawa.

Searches using specialized detection equipment are anything but
random. The dogs or other good detection devices only target those
who are guilty. Innocent people are not randomly searched. It is now
the role of the government to correct this decision by the court of
supreme buffoons.

Dr. Paul Green,

St. Albert