I think that there is certainly a high risk of a charter challenge. As we said, this is not a typical warrant. A warrant is granted by a judge to avoid a charter violation, whereas the CSIS warrant could authorize a charter violation, so we have an open-ended authorization for the violation of any charter right. To me, that may be very difficult to justify under the charter. We really are not being honest with the public in prescribing by law what charter rights we're talking about.
My own view is that the first charter right that will be violated by one of these warrants is the section 6 right of citizens of Canada to leave or to come back to Canada. We could be having a debate, as they have had in the U.K., about whether reasonable and proportional limits should be placed on that right, but that's a very different and more specific debate than saying to Federal Court judges that they can authorize any violation of the charter.
Obviously, the Federal Court will take a hard look at this, but we also have to remember that there is no appeal from their decision. This idea that judges would pre-authorize violations of the charter is totally novel. I'm not aware of any other provision that allows for that, and I do think it could be challenged under the charter.