SUPREME COURT TO CONSIDER SANCTITY OF TRASH

The Supreme Court of Canada is about to tackle trash.

One of the most significant cases of the fall session, which begins
this week, will be heard on Friday when the bench considers whether
police should be permitted to continue their longtime practice of
rummaging through garbage set outside for municipal collection.

Lawyers for Calgary drug dealer Russell Patrick will argue that coffee
grounds, bill remnants, bank statements, empty pill bottles, dinner
scraps and other discarded refuse is private information that should
be constitutionally shielded from the eyes of the state.

"Household waste may disclose a variety of personal information
including one's lifestyle choices, DNA, finances, health and
identification," lawyer Jennifer Ruttan says in a court brief.

Mr. Patrick is challenging the power of Calgary police to seize four
bags of trash from his property, gleaning enough evidence of drug
manufacturing to obtain a warrant to search his home and subsequently
charge him with possessing and trafficking ecstasy.

A former national swimming star who set a national and a world record,
Mr. Patrick was sentenced to four years in prison in 2006. He wants
the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction on grounds that
constitutionally protected sanctity of one's dwelling includes the
trash stored in bins outside and that police violated his charter
right against unreasonable search and seizure.

The Crown contends Mr. Patrick gave up his privacy rights when he
abandoned his unwanted garbage, an argument that succeeded in the
Alberta Court of Appeal.

"The charter has not transformed the act of putting out the trash into
a privileged and confidential communication between householder and
garbage collector," lawyers Ron Reimer and Jolaine Antonio say in a
written court submission.

"To exclude evidence in this case would bring disrepute to the
administration of justice by letting a plainly guilty drug
manufacturer go unpunished."

The Crown asserts that combing garbage for clues is tantamount to
"old-fashioned police footwork."

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, one of several intervenors
in the case, rejects the argument that picking through refuse is fair
game because it has been abandoned, noting in a written court
submission that city bylaws nationwide prohibit "scavenging" garbage.

Moreover, association lawyers Jonathan Lisus and Alexi Wood warn that
allowing police to persist with the practice makes them "free to
harvest waste in 'bad neighbourhoods' to build databases of
information."

But the Crown counters garbage combing "is an unpleasant,
time-consuming manual process to which police resources will only be
devoted in the course of focused criminal investigations."

The court begins its busy fall sitting tomorrow with another appeal
from Alberta launched by a group of Hutterites, who will argue a
provincial law requiring photographs on drivers licences violates
their religious belief against having their pictures taken.

The judges will weigh in this month on a divorce case from British
Columbia, involving whether an estranged couple's separation agreement
can be reopened amid allegations that the former husband
misrepresented his assets.

At the end of the sitting in December, the court will consider a
challenge by a group of Quebec parents who are seeking the right to
transfer their children from English private school to English public
school.

The court session begins with a bench at reduced strength, following
the June retirement of Justice Michel Bastarache.

On the eve of the federal election call, Stephen Harper nominated Nova
Scotia Court of Appeal Justice Thomas Cromwell as Judge Bastarache's
successor, but the prime minister said Judge Cromwell would have to
face public questioning from a panel of MPs before the appointment is
finalized.

The court does not sit with eight judges, to avoid the event of a tie,
so it is effectively a seven-member bench until the next government is
installed after the Oct. 14 general election.