CIPPIC granted leave to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada in R v Jarvis

Centre for Law, Technology and Society
Technology Law, Ethics and Policy
Aerial view of the University of Ottawa Campus and the Rideau Canal.
The Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) has been granted leave to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada in R v. Jarvis (SCC Case No. 37833) on the Interpretation of the Voyeurism Offense.
CIPPIC logo

The R v. Jarvis case is an appeal of an Ontario Court of Appeal decision where a teacher was charged under the voyeurism provisions of the Criminal Code. The accused was using a camera pen in order to take videos of the chests and cleavage of female students without their knowledge. The decision which is now under appeal ruled that the videos were not taken in "circumstances giving rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy", which constitute an element necessary to establish the offense of voyeurism.

The team at CIPPIC will argue that the Court should interpret "circumstances giving rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy" consistently with the Court’s well-established jurisprudence on privacy: privacy is normative, contextual, and not risk-based.

CIPPIC is working with Professor Jane Bailey, a Faculty member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. The intervention will tap into the excellent work done by Professor Bailey and Professor Valerie Steeves in their SSHRC-funded eQuality Project, and their previous eGirls Project.

CIPPIC is a legal clinic hosted at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa.

  • See the Supreme Court of Canada's case summary here.
  • See CIPPIC'S Application to Intervene here.