Entering homes and private places

Desjardins reads an old saying to the class: a person's home is their castle. It goes back to an English case from 1604, and it still shapes the law in both Canada. 'Of all the places you will go as officers,' he says, 'the home is where the law gives people the most protection, and where your mistakes will be judged most harshly.' Homes hold the most private parts of people's lives, families and children live there, and an officer who enters uninvited is a stranger in the most personal space a person has. This lesson brings together the rules on entering homes and other private places: when officers may approach, knock, enter, look around, secure the premises and search.

The approach: knocking and the implied licence

Officers, like anyone else, may walk up to a front door and knock. Canadian courts recognize an implied licence for members of the public, including police, to approach a home's door and knock for the purpose of communicating with the occupant. In R. v. Evans (1996), the Supreme Court held that the licence does not extend to approaching a door for the purpose of securing evidence against the occupant, such as smelling for marijuana through the door; that is a search. In R. v. Le (2019), officers who walked into a small backyard without permission to question young men there were held to have arbitrarily detained them, and the Court stressed that a backyard is not a public space. In R. v. Tessling (2004), on the other hand, the Court held that a heat-sensing flight over a house did not intrude on a reasonable expectation of privacy because the information it revealed was so limited.

The practical rule is simple: officers may go where a visitor would go, for the reasons a visitor would go there. They may knock at the front door to ask questions. They may not wander around to the back, peer through windows from places visitors do not go, or use the visit as cover for gathering evidence. If no one answers, they leave. If someone answers, they may ask to speak with them, and the person may decline and close the door.

Entering: the four lawful routes

There are four ways into a home for police: a warrant, consent, exigent circumstances, and a few narrow statutory powers. A Feeney authorization under sections 529 and 529.1 allows entry to arrest; a search warrant under section 487 or another statute allows entry to search; consent from an occupant who meets the Wills conditions allows entry within the scope agreed; and section 529.3 and the common law allow entry without a warrant in exigent circumstances, including hot pursuit, which the Supreme Court recognized in R. v. Macooh (1993) for provincial offences as well as criminal ones, and entry to respond to a disconnected 911 call or other risk to life under R. v. Godoy (1999).

Godoy deserves special attention because officers will face it on almost every shift. In that case, a 911 call was disconnected; officers went to the apartment, and Godoy opened the door, said there was no problem, and tried to close it. Officers pushed in and found his wife crying with a swollen eye. The Supreme Court held that the police duty to protect life justified entering to find the caller and make sure she was safe, but that the authority was limited to that purpose: officers could find the caller and determine the reason for the call, not search the home.

Announcing before entry

The common law and section 529.4 require officers to announce their presence and purpose before forcing entry, except where a warrant authorizes entry without announcement or the officers have reasonable grounds to suspect that announcing would expose officers or others to harm or result in the imminent loss or destruction of evidence. In R. v. Cornell (2010), the Supreme Court upheld an unannounced entry by a tactical team into a home where they had information that occupants might be armed and might destroy drugs, but stressed that the decision must be based on the information known at the time and that the manner of entry must be reasonable. Desjardins tells the class that the decision to enter without announcing is a high-risk decision that should be made by a supervisor with all available information, and recorded.

Inside: protective sweeps and safety searches

Once officers are lawfully inside a home to make an arrest, they may need to check for other people who could pose a danger. Canadian courts have accepted a limited safety search of a home during an arrest where officers have reasonable grounds to believe there is an imminent risk to safety, applying the reasoning in R. v. MacDonald (2014). The search must be limited to looking for people who might pose a threat, in places a person could be, and must stop when the risk is resolved. It is not a search for evidence. Evidence seen in plain view during a lawful sweep may be seized; evidence found by opening drawers or small containers where no person could hide may not.

Securing premises while a warrant is obtained

Sometimes officers have grounds for a search warrant but worry that evidence will be destroyed before they can get one. Can they secure the house while they wait? In R. v. Silveira (1995), officers entered a house without a warrant to secure it while a warrant was being obtained, to stop the occupants from destroying drugs after arrests nearby. The Supreme Court held that the entry violated section 8, describing it as a serious breach, though it admitted the evidence on the unusual facts. The lesson for officers is that entering to hold a home is itself a search that needs justification; securing the outside, watching the doors and stopping anyone leaving with evidence is safer than going in. Detective Sergeant Ali's team kept two officers watching the Birch Lane garage from the street while he drafted his application, which Desjardins calls exactly the right approach.

# How long did securing a premises take while a warrant was obtained? (Port Ardent, one year)
holds = [  # (minutes from securing to warrant signed, entry made before warrant?)
    (95, False), (140, False), (70, False), (210, True), (55, False), (180, False),
    (120, False), (65, False), (300, True), (85, False), (150, False), (110, False),
]
times = sorted(m for m, _ in holds)
n = len(times)
median = (times[n // 2 - 1] + times[n // 2]) / 2 if n % 2 == 0 else times[n // 2]
inside = sum(1 for _, e in holds if e)
print("holds:", n, "median minutes:", median, "longest:", max(times))
print("entered before the warrant:", inside, "of", n)
print("held from outside only:", n - inside)

holds: 12 median minutes: 115.0 longest: 300
entered before the warrant: 2 of 12
held from outside only: 10

Across twelve holds in one year, the median time from securing the premises to a signed warrant was 115 minutes, and the longest was five hours. In ten of twelve cases, officers secured the place from outside, as policy requires. In two, officers went in before the warrant arrived, and both files were flagged for legal review. Desjardins tells the class that the median of under two hours is the strongest argument against entering: in most cases, the warrant arrives soon enough that holding the outside is enough.

Apartments, hotels and shared spaces

Courts have extended privacy protection to some shared spaces in multi-unit buildings. In R. v. White (2015), the Ontario Court of Appeal held that a resident of a small condominium building had a reasonable expectation of privacy in common areas such as a storage locker area and hallway, so police who entered without permission to observe him intruded on it, while other cases involving large buildings with many residents reach different results. Hotel and motel guests have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their rooms during their stay. Businesses open to the public may be entered during business hours where the public is invited, but private offices and back rooms are protected.

Garages, sheds and outbuildings fall somewhere in between. A garage attached to a house is part of the home. A detached garage or shed close to the house is usually within the perimeter of the home and protected almost as strongly. A rented storage garage, like Brandt's on Birch Lane, is a private place the renter controls and in which they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, even though it is not a dwelling. An officer cannot open its door to look inside without a warrant, consent or exigent circumstances.

Residents who are vulnerable or unwell

Many calls to homes involve people who are unwell rather than dangerous: an older person who has not answered the phone for days, a person in a mental health crisis, a child left alone. These calls test the line between helping and intruding. Officers who receive a well-being check should start with the least intrusive steps: knock and call out, look through windows from places visitors normally go, call the person's phone, speak to neighbours and family, and check with the building manager. Often one of these steps resolves the call.

If those steps raise real concern that someone inside needs help, such as a person seen lying on the floor through a window, a strong smell of gas, or a family member describing a recent overdose, the emergency route described in this lesson may apply. If they do not, officers should record what they did, leave a card, and follow up, rather than force entry because it would be reassuring to look. Desjardins tells the class that the officers he most admires on well-being calls are the ones who know when to force a door and when to keep knocking, and who can explain both choices afterward.

Mental health calls deserve particular care. Section 17 of the Mental Health Act allows officers to take a person for assessment in defined circumstances, but it does not by itself authorize entering a home to find them; officers need a warrant, consent or an emergency. Port Ardent's co-response team, which pairs an officer with a mental health nurse on weekday afternoons and evenings, has found that most of these calls can be resolved at the door with patience and a conversation.