Alberta law effectively turned scrap dealers into state agents

In R v Khairullah, the Alberta Court of Justice was asked by an accused to declare that an Alberta law’s requirement that scrap metal dealers collect personal information from scrap metal sellers, which is entered into a police-accessible database, is an unreasonable search under section 8 of the Charter. The Court found that requiring a private business to gather personal information from a lawful seller of scrap metal made the business an agent of the state, and the breadth of personal information and how it was stored resulted in a violation of section 8 of the Charter. This decision may have broader application in other “know your customer” contexts. 

The accused, a scrap metal dealer, was previously charged with violating the Scrap Metal Dealers and Recyclers Identification Act. He challenged the constitutionality of the Act and regulations (addressed in 2023 ABCJ 235 and 2024 ABKB 286), and also challenged the customer identification requirements under section 8 of the Charter.

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