Wiretaps no reason to keep Project Traveller warrants secret, judge rules

The public has a right to Project Traveller warrant information even if it includes police wiretaps, an Ontario judge ruled Tuesday.

That opens the door to making public reams of pages that would otherwise have been kept secret. But media lawyers will still have to fight in court to get them.

Toronto Police carried out a series of pre-dawn raids in June, resulting in dozens of arrests as part of a gun-and-drug investigation dubbed “Project Traveller.” Several media organizations, Global News among them, have been trying to get the information behind those search warrants released.

In depth: Project Traveller

At issue is whether wiretap information in warrants should be treated as evidence in a criminal proceeding or part of an ongoing investigation.

This week’s decision, from Justice Ian Nordheimer, overturns a previous ruling from Justice Philip Downes, who found that wiretaps were part of an investigation and therefore should be kept secret by default.

Nordheimer disagreed: Police investigators trying to obtain a warrant would have used information from these wiretaps before a judge, making them part of a criminal proceeding .

“In order to obtain a search warrant, the police were required to make an application on oath,” Nordheimer writes. The information “is sworn evidence upon which the issuance of the search warrant is based.

“…It is hard to see how the application for, and issuance of, a search warrant would not be considered … as being part of pre-trial steps in a criminal proceeding.”

The documents aren’t yet public, however: A judge must now determine whether the public interest of publishing this information warrants its release.

Read: Justice Ian Nordheimer’s decision on Project Traveller informations to obtain