Occurrence reports are not private records Parliament intended to protect as third party record disclosure

R. v. Quesnelle, 2013 ONCA 180 holds that occurrence reports are producible as Stinchcombe disclosure, not pursuant to the third party record regime.  The Court ruled:

[35]       With the nature of the privacy interest contemplated by s. 278 in mind, I will now turn to the "the words of [the] Act … read in their entire context and in their grammatical and ordinary sense." The actual words used in s. 278.1, omitting only the language of example, read:

… "record" means any form of record that contains personal information for which there is a reasonable expectation of privacy … but does not include records made by persons responsible for the investigation or prosecution of the offence.

[36]       The records excluded under this definition are those "made by persons responsible for the investigation or prosecution of the offence". They are not records made by other persons which may be held by the police or the prosecution; the excluded records are only those "made" by those responsible for the investigation or prosecution of the offence.

[37]       Further, there is no language which limits the word "records" to only those records made in relation to the specific offence in issue. Had it been Parliament's intention to limit the exclusion to only those records prepared in relation to the specific offence in issue, it could easily have employed language to accomplish that purpose.  It did not.

[38]       Considering both the intention of Parliament in enacting Bill C-46 and the words of s. 278.1 read in their grammatical and ordinary sense, I must therefore respectfully disagree with the trial judge's conclusion that occurrence reports qualify as "records" for the purposes of s. 278.2.  In my view, occurrence reports do not fall within the realm of private records Parliament intended to target in enacting ss. 278.1 to 278.9.