The duty of a peace officer to verify information received from a source is also confirmed in Regina v. Lamy by the adoption of the following passage from Regina v. Greffe, 1990 CanLII 143 (SCC), [1990] 1 S.C.R. 755: ... a conclusion that the police had reliable information about the appellant's attempt to import heroin must be based on more than the fact of a subsequent recovery of the drugs. There must be an independent inquiry into the source and reliability of the confidential information in order to determine whether, in the totality of the circumstances, there existed reasonable and probable grounds to believe the appellant was carrying the heroin or whether there was mere suspicion. Relevant to this inquiry is whether the information received contains sufficient detail to ensure that it is based on more than mere rumour or gossip, whether the source or means of knowledge is revealed and whether there is any indicia of the reliability of the source of the information, such as the supplying of reliable information in the past...
Although the authorities cited in Regina v. Lamy, supra address the reasonable and probable grounds required to justify a warrantless search, in my view the same principles apply here. In the totality of the circumstances, was the information supplied by the source sufficiently reliable such that there were reasonable and probable grounds to believe the accused was in possession of narcotics for the purpose of trafficking?
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