Case information

Provincial offences — Insider trading — Courts — Jurisdiction — Autorité des marchés financiers — Electronic media containing millions of electronic documents seized — Detention of seized documents extended several times by Superior Court — No proceedings brought following investigation — Respondents applying to Superior Court for return of documents — Superior Court determining that return of documents also included destruction of any copy — Jurisdiction of Superior Court to decide issue of return and destruction — Right of appeal and forum for appeal — Whether provincial court of appeal has jurisdiction with respect to judgment rendered without jurisdiction by superior court in absence of enactment providing for right of appeal — Whether court of competent jurisdiction can make order concerning copies of things seized, including their destruction — Code of Penal Procedure, CQLR, c. C-25.1, art. 138.

Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

Following an investigation and numerous searches, the applicant, Autorité des marchés financiers (“AMF”), notified the Superior Court that no penal or administrative proceedings would be brought against the respondents. It nevertheless argued that it was entitled to keep copies of more than ten million technology-based documents seized during the investigation. The Superior Court determined that the AMF could not keep copies of the seized documents. A seizure does not make the AMF the owner of the things seized, but only their custodian, and the public interest requires that investigations be conducted in a manner that respects the rights of persons from whom things are seized and third parties. The Court of Appeal intervened, finding that the Superior Court did not have jurisdiction to decide whether copies could be kept, as that power belonged exclusively to the Court of Québec. It therefore dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.