Charterpedia is a GC Law website. See S.9 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Ride Stop as a violation of s.8,9 and s.10 of the Charter. From Charterpedia. Click here.

Conversely, a law authorizing automatic and indeterminate detention without any standards is arbitrary. A law compelling the automatic detention of individuals on the basis of the danger they present to society will be arbitrary if there are no criteria or standards in place to determine if they are in fact dangerous (Swain, supra at 1012). A law authorizing the random stopping of motor vehicles was found to be arbitrary because it gave police officers an “absolute discretion” in the selection of which drivers to stop: “A discretion is arbitrary if there are no criteria, express or implied, which govern its exercise” (Hufsky, supra at paragraph 13. See also R. v. Ladouceur, [1990] 1 S.C.R. 1257 which cites Hufsky at 1276-1277).

Detention undertaken for improper motives may be held to be arbitrary. Anything in the circumstances of the detention or arrest which would make it suspect on any other ground, such as an arrest made because a police officer was biased towards a person of a different race or nationality, or where there was a personal enmity between a police officer directed towards the person arrested, if established, might have the effect of rendering invalid an otherwise lawful arrest (R. v. Storrey, [1990] 1 S.C.R. 241 at 251-252). “Individual liberty interests are fundamental to the Canadian constitutional order. Consequently, any intrusion upon them must not be taken lightly and, as a result, police officers do not have carte blanche to detain. The power to detain cannot be exercised on the basis of a hunch, nor can it become a de factoarrest” (Mann, supra at paragraph 35).