CIPPIC Intervening in R v Jarvis on Interpretation of the Voyeurism Offense
CIPPIC has been granted leave to intervene in R. v. Jarvis, SCC Case No. 27833. The case is an appeal of an Ontario Court of Appeal decision acquitting a teacher of a charge under the voyeurism provisions of the Criminal Code. The accused had used a camera pen to surreptitiously take videos of the chests and cleavage of female students. The decision under appeal determined that the videos were not taken in "“circumstances giving rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy”, an element necessary to establish the offense of voyeurism.
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 delighted to be working with our colleague Professor Jane Bailey on the appeal. CIPPIC's intervention will tap into the excellent work done by Professor Bailey and Professor Valerie Steeves in their SSHRC-funded eQuality Project, and their predecessor eGirls Project.