R v Barclay

With this decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal acts to prevent the gradual expansion of what has come to be permitted under the common law power of investigative detention. There has been a tendency to expand the reach of that power by assessing it from the perspective of the police, and the trial decision in this case was a clear example of that. The Court of Appeal judgment here properly places the focus back on the rights of the accused, and the extent to which an interference with those rights has been authorized by law. The point of the power is not to permit the police to do whatever they see as necessary to further their investigation.