The court concluded that they should, ruling “the fact that the appellant may not have known of the terms of shipment does not make his subjective expectation objectively reasonable.”

The court seems to think that people know that courier packages are subject to inspection and therefore they should not expect any privacy in those packages. Yet it is difficult to reconcile an express acknowledgement that a person who did not know the terms of the contract with the conclusion that they was nevertheless bound by them, particularly since this was a domestic shipment that would not typically involve customs agents or other authorities.

More broadly, the decision suggests that Canadians can lose their constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure on the basis of contractual terms to which they are not even a party. The court could have attempted to preserve privacy rights by concluding that the search was illegal but that the evidence was still admissible. By upholding the legality of the search, however, it provided a troubling reminder about how Canadians should not expect much when it comes to the reasonable expectation of privacy standard.