OTTAWA—The Supreme Court of Canada will weigh high-profile appeals centred on the constitutionality of victim surcharges, of the media’s right to resist police seizure of their source materials, and of mandatory minimum penalties in child luring cases as its spring session gets underway in mid-April.

Amid the court’s upcoming docket of 19 cases is an appeal brought by Vice News which asks the court to decide whether journalists have a constitutional right to protect source material from the prying eyes of police agencies investigating suspected terrorists.

In this case the suspected terrorist’s identity is already known to the police and the public.

Vice News reporter Ben Makuch interviewed Farah Shirdon, a Calgary-raised self-declared Daesh fighter who left Canada for Syria and Iraq in 2014, for a series of three articles Vice published between June and October 2014. The following February, the Mounties came calling for Makuch’s notes.

The RCMP persuaded an Ontario provincial court judge, with no advance warning or opportunity for Vice to rebut the police arguments, to issue a production order forcing Vice to turn over Makuch and Shirdon’s communications conducted via the Kik text messaging system.

The February 2015 production order was later upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the RCMP charged Shirdon with six terrorism offences.

It’s not at all clear whether the Mounties will get their man. Shirdon, 21 at the time Makuch reached him, has been reported dead, though not for the first time.

Still, in the Crown’s eyes, the issue is very much alive. The RCMP has not dropped their pursuit of the Vice materials, which remain under seal pending the outcome of Vice’s challenge.

The case unfolded before Parliament passed the Protection of Journalistic Sources Act last October. That law now sets out protections and procedures to follow before journalists’ confidential sources may be seized by police, including requiring a heads-up to media when the cops are looking for a judicial warrant to access their materials.

It’s doubtful whether even that law could have protected Makuch’s material.

It doesn’t say journalists’ sources and documents are completely off-limits; it merely outlines ways to ensure that they are a last-resort in criminal investigations, and that competing constitutional rights and interests are properly balanced by a senior trial court judge. The law may only apply to confidential sources, not to non-confidential sources such as Shirdon.

Vice News argues journalists should not be turned into the investigative arm of police, saying sources will dry up for reporters, and ultimately threaten the ability of free press to do its work in a democracy.

Lawyer Justin Safayeni, who is seeking to intervene on behalf of a group of media organizations in the case, said the Supreme Court hasn’t squarely considered a case such as this before, and it will further define what the Charter’s guarantee of a free press means.

The high court in the past agreed the press deserve certain protections but ultimately ruled in favour of the police in a 1991 case where investigators seized CBC broadcast videotapes of a public protest. In that case there was no confidential source.

And in a 2010 case, the high court ruled journalists do not enjoy a blanket right to shield their materials or identity of confidential sources during police investigations, but said sources may be shielded on a case-by-case basis.

The Vice case, Safayeni said, falls in the middle: it involves a journalist-source relationship and journalistic materials, but the source is not a confidential one. He said the court must weigh carefully the fact that the material sought is to be used in the police prosecution of the source, not to prevent a crime or to investigate someone else, and the fact that the possibility of a trial anytime soon is remote.

“Our argument is not that we stand above and beyond the reach of warrants and production orders in every case, but the Supreme Court has recognized 25-plus years ago now that special considerations do apply to media, and that’s appropriate because of the media’s unique role,” Safayeni said. “It doesn’t mean that the police can never get records from the media but it does mean you have to scrutinize requests very carefully, and a case like this really puts those principles to the test.”

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Among a number of parties seeking to intervene in the case are the CBC, Global News, Postmedia, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, the Canadian Media Lawyers Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, the Canadian Media Guild, Communications Workers of America Canada, Centre for Free Expression, the Media Legal Defence Initiative, Reporters Without Borders, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Media Law Resource Centre, International Press Institute, Article 19, Pen International and Pen Canada.

On April 17, the high court will hear several appeals that put a spotlight on previous Conservative government criminal justice bills, including mandatory impositions of victim surcharges amounting to 30 per cent of any fine per offence, plus surcharges of $100 to $200 depending on the severity of the crime, amounts that could be increased. In 2013, the Harper government passed a bill that removed judicial discretion to waive the victim surcharge in cases where it was a hardship.

The judges will also decide whether a one-year mandatory minimum penalty in an internet child-luring case was excessive, and in another child-luring case will decide the extent of police powers to seize screenshots of emails and whether an accused had a reasonable expectation of privacy.