Daily BrewSearching students: Policies differ between Quebec, other provinces
Reportedly, it started out as a joke — a stupid joke, in retrospect. A 15-year-old Quebec City high school student texted a friend that she had some “pot” to sell.
Supposedly it was a reaction to having her locker searched for drugs. But before long, the teenager found herself in a room, ordered to strip naked behind a blanket or screen so her clothes could be searched. No drugs were found and the girl herself was not searched.
The incident last week caused a furor in Quebec, not so much that the teen was subjected to a personal search, but because it was done by school officials and not the police.
Quebec Education Minister Yves Bolduc defended the practice, telling the National Assembly administrators have the power to compel such searches under certain circumstances, as long as they’re “respectful,” the Montreal Gazette reported.
Quebec policy allowing strip searches of high school students sparks outrage
School employee gave student drugs, liquor to have sex: Winnipeg police
But the 15-year-old girl told Le Journal de Montreal she felt violated by the whole process and was not allowed to call her mother, who reportedly wants to take the issue to court.
Quebec City’s school board issued a news release explaining such searches are rare and only carried out if there’s a safety concern or violation of a school’s code of conduct.
Right to search students subject to court challenges
Schools everywhere have the legal right to open students’ lockers and look through backpacks if they suspect contraband is present, but personal searches have been subject to some legal murkiness in the past.
The Supreme Court of Canada upheld school officials’ right to search students in a Nova Scotia case where a young man was found in possession of pot during a search by a vice-principal in the presence of an RCMP officer during a school dance.
The drug possession case was initially thrown out at trial when the judge ruled the principal was acting as an agent of the police and the search violated the student’s Charter right to protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
But the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that the fact a Mountie was present did not turn it into a warrantless search by police. The vice-principal would have acted no differently if the officer was not in the room and had enough authority under provincial education statutes to conduct the search, the court found.
A decade later, an Ontario case that wound up before the Supreme Court left school administrators’ authority to conduct searches intact but set boundaries on police involvement. The case, known as the Queen vs. A.M., tossed out a drug conviction against student charged after a police sniffer dog detected drugs in his backpack.
The police had responded to an “open invitation” from the school principal to bring a sniffer dog to the school. But the high court found such a random search conducted without actual suspicion drugs were present violated a student’s expectation of privacy and unreasonable search and seizure under the Section 8 of the Charter.
No police were involved in the Quebec search but other provinces do require police to be present in such cases.
B.C. does not allow school officials to search without police
In British Columbia, for example, each school district has one or more police liaison officers who would be contacted if administrators believed they needed to search a student, Education Ministry spokeswoman Kaitlyn Rosenburg told Yahoo Canada News on Wednesday.
Her counterpart in Ontario, Derek Luk, said there’s nothing in the province’s Education Act that would permit a student’s clothing or person to be searched by school staff.
"In the event of an incident of suspected possession or trafficking of illegal drugs, the Police/School Board Protocol states that the school administrator must notify their local police service,” Luk said via email.
New Brunswick’s Department of Education and Early Childhood Development is developing a provincial policy on searches and seizures on school property, which is expected to be released later this year. The current practice is to leave it up to individual school districts, department spokeswoman Leah Fitzgerald said in an email.
"The intent of the new policy will be to provide standards to schools to follow for searches of students as well as searches of school property [i.e. lockers or desks]," she said. "Discussion around the development of the policy includes a requirement for law enforcement officials to be contacted and involved if a body search is required."
No one from the Canadian Association of Principals responded to Yahoo News Canada's request for comment on the Quebec situation. The Canadian Teachers' Federation said its members do not become involved in searching students or their belongings.
