## Facts

- Lawrence Richard Hape, a Canadian businessman, operated an investment company in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
- The RCMP investigated Hape for suspected money laundering related to proceeds of drug trafficking.
- Turks and Caicos authorities permitted the RCMP to assist locally, with a Turks and Caicos police superintendent directing the investigation and informing the RCMP they would act under his authority.
- Over about one year, RCMP officers, accompanied by the local superintendent, entered and searched Hape’s office premises multiple times and seized business records.
- At Hape’s Canadian trial, the Crown tendered the seized records; Hape sought exclusion, alleging the searches breached Charter s. 8.
- Hape was convicted of two counts of money laundering under the *Controlled Drugs and Substances Act* and received a 30-month sentence; a limited forfeiture order was made.
- The Supreme Court of Canada granted leave only on whether Charter s. 8 applied to the foreign searches and, if not, whether the evidence should nonetheless be excluded on fairness grounds.

## Issues

1. Whether the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to searches and seizures conducted by Canadian police officers outside Canada, on foreign territory, with host-state consent and authority.
2. If the Charter does not apply to the searches, whether admitting the resulting evidence would still violate trial fairness or require exclusion (including under Charter ss. 7, 11(d), or 24(2)).

## Decision

- The Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the convictions.
- The Charter did not apply to the searches conducted in the Turks and Caicos in the circumstances presented.
- Admission of the seized business records did not make the trial unfair and did not justify exclusion.

## Legal Principles

- Canadian constitutional and statutory interpretation is informed by a presumption of conformity with public international law, including respect for territorial sovereignty.
- The Charter ordinarily will not be applied to regulate Canadian officials’ investigative acts on foreign territory where those acts are carried out with the host state’s consent and under its legal authority; the legality of the search is generally assessed under the law of the place where it occurred.
- The Charter may apply abroad in different circumstances, including where Canadian officials act without host-state consent or where Canada exercises effective control comparable to jurisdiction (left open).
- Even where the Charter does not govern the foreign investigation, Canadian courts must assess whether admitting foreign-obtained evidence would undermine trial fairness; exclusion may be warranted where admission would render the trial unfair or where the manner of obtaining the evidence is fundamentally unacceptable.
- Seized business records obtained abroad, absent proof of illegality under local law and absent “conscriptive” or fundamentally abusive methods, may be admitted without violating trial fairness.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court of Canada held that Charter protections against unreasonable search and seizure generally do not extend to cooperative foreign searches conducted under host-state authority, and it admitted the resulting records because their use did not compromise the fairness of the Canadian trial.


R. v. Hape, [2007] 2 S.C.R. 292 (Can. 2007)