Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Targeted disclosure in extradition proceedings is distinguished from full Stinchcombe-style criminal trial disclosure, limiting “all material generated” requests.
• Adequacy of the Second Revised Record of the Case (SRROC) is questioned for failing to explain in sufficient detail how Canadian-gathered evidence was obtained and whether it complies with s. 32(2) of the Extradition Act and the Charter.
• Reliability concerns arise because the CW, originally described as the central witness and source of most evidence, will no longer testify, yet the SRROC still relies heavily on information traceable to him.
• Legality and sufficiency of a Quebec s. 184.2 Criminal Code authorization and the voluntariness and context of the CW’s consent are put in issue, necessitating production of the authorization, ITO, and related materials.
• Identification and admissibility of audio and video recordings of meetings in Canada require direct access to those recordings and officer notes, especially after the CW’s removal from the witness list.
• A realistic possibility of abuse of process is raised regarding law enforcement’s contemporaneous knowledge of Singh’s kidnapping in Mexico and alleged inaction in the face of known danger.

Factual background and parties’ positions
The case concerns an extradition request brought by the Attorney General of Canada (AGC) on behalf of the United States of America to commit into custody two persons sought for extradition, Hardeep Ratte and Gurpreet Singh. They are alleged to have participated in a conspiracy to transport large quantities of cocaine from Los Angeles into Canada for a drug trafficking organization reportedly headed by Canadian national Ryan Wedding. The U.S. investigation focused on a drug network operating in Colombia and Mexico, and Canadian authorities, specifically the RCMP, conducted a parallel investigation after a U.S. request for assistance. This extradition matter is procedurally unusual: a key cooperating witness (CW) has effectively disappeared from the trial plan, the Record of the Case has gone through multiple versions, and Singh was kidnapped in Mexico and resurfaced in Toronto only shortly before his arrest. Against that backdrop, Ratte and Singh brought a pre-committal application for disclosure, asking the AGC to produce targeted materials they say are necessary to test the admissibility and reliability of the evidence summarized in the Second Revised Record of the Case (SRROC) and to explore possible Charter and abuse-of-process issues. The AGC resisted, arguing that the requested disclosure goes beyond what is appropriate in extradition and resembles Stinchcombe obligations applicable at a Canadian criminal trial, not at a committal hearing.

Canadian investigation, encrypted communications, and surveillance
The SRROC indicates that in July 2023, following a U.S. request, RCMP Staff Sergeant Stephen MacQueen was assigned to assist the FBI in investigating the drug trafficking organization. On October 3, 2023, the RCMP in Montreal commenced a parallel Canadian investigation. During this period, the same CW who was assisting the FBI also worked with the RCMP. Acting under police direction, the CW communicated with Canadian-based suspects, including Ratte and Singh, and arranged meetings in the Greater Toronto Area. The SRROC describes meetings between the CW and the two respondents near Pearson airport and at a Brampton auto body shop, which were video and audio recorded. These recordings were made under an authorization obtained in Quebec Superior Court under s. 184.2 of the Criminal Code, and the resulting material was shared with U.S. authorities. Staff Sergeant MacQueen is said to have reviewed the Brampton footage and is expected to testify that the recording shows Singh referring to Ratte as his uncle and Ratte referring to Singh as his nephew, and to give evidence that they discussed transporting cocaine for Wedding’s organization and using encrypted messaging applications to coordinate their activities. Importantly, the SRROC does not incorporate the recordings themselves or provide detailed descriptions of their content; it offers only a summary of MacQueen’s second-hand account. Defence counsel argue that the SRROC’s treatment of the s. 184.2 authorization is also skeletal: it names the issuing judge and the RCMP affiant, notes that the order was sealed and valid for 60 days, but gives almost no detail on what was placed before the Quebec court to justify the interception, how extensive the Information to Obtain was, or the specific facts relied upon. They emphasize that the CW’s consent is central to the lawfulness of these interceptions, yet the SRROC says little about the circumstances in which that consent was obtained or the CW’s background.

The cooperating witness’s role, unavailability, and impact on reliability
The CW was described as a member of Wedding’s organization who agreed to cooperate with authorities in hopes of favourable treatment for his own role. According to the SRROC, the FBI monitored and reviewed the contents of his phone, and he acted at the direction of both U.S. and Canadian investigators in communicating with Wedding, his lieutenant Andrew Clark, Ratte, and Singh via an encrypted messaging platform. It was the CW who first identified Ratte and Singh to investigators as participants or agents of the organization and who coordinated at least two truckloads totalling more than 650 kilograms of cocaine to be transported from Los Angeles into Canada. Crucially, the CW was not a traditional confidential informant protected by informer privilege; earlier in the Revised Record of the Case (RROC), the United States had indicated that he would be named and produced as a live witness at trial and characterized his testimony as essential. The RROC promised that before trial his name and prior statements would be disclosed, and that he would testify in person and be subject to cross-examination. Shortly thereafter, however, the SRROC was issued and the prosecution theory shifted. The SRROC states that the CW will not be called as a witness, even though the prosecution continues to rely heavily on evidence derived from his activities and communications. Instead of his direct testimony, the case will proceed based on evidence from other witnesses to whom the CW purportedly relayed information. The AGC declined to explain in court why the CW is now unavailable. While media reports in Singh’s record suggest that the CW, a dual Colombian-Canadian citizen, was killed in Medellín, Colombia, this is not confirmed in the SRROC, and the AGC would say only that the CW will not testify. For the extradition judge, this shift presents a significant reliability issue: the witness previously described as the central evidentiary source has disappeared from the trial plan, yet the record still depends on his statements and identifications now filtered through others. This invites scrutiny both of the completeness and trustworthiness of the SRROC and of whether the evidence continues to meet the standard for committal when the main direct witness is no longer available.

Disclosure standards in extradition and Canadian-gathered evidence
Justice Morgan frames the disclosure motion within established extradition law. A certified Record of the Case is presumed accurate and reliable, and Stinchcombe’s full disclosure requirements do not apply to extradition committal hearings. Extradition is treaty-based and governed by the Extradition Act, which contemplates a more limited, streamlined process in which guilt or innocence is not determined. At the same time, Canadian law draws a clear line between foreign-gathered evidence and evidence gathered in Canada. Foreign evidence need only satisfy the requesting state’s law and support prosecution under that law. By contrast, s. 32(1)–(2) of the Extradition Act mandates that Canadian-gathered evidence must satisfy Canadian evidentiary rules, including Charter standards. The Supreme Court has held that the SRROC (or ROC) must therefore include sufficient information to show how Canadian evidence was obtained and allow the person sought and the extradition judge to meaningfully assess admissibility. Where there is an “air of reality” to a Charter claim or, in some contexts, even a reasonable question as to whether Canadian evidence conforms in substance with domestic rules, an extradition judge has discretion to order targeted disclosure. Justice Morgan accepts that the AGC is correct in rejecting broad, open-ended demands for “all material generated” in the investigation as incompatible with extradition’s more focused disclosure regime. However, he also emphasizes that the duty to inform and the power to order disclosure exist to ensure that Canadian-gathered evidence is actually Charter-compliant and that the record is not manifestly unreliable. In this case, the unexplained disappearance of the CW as a witness, the lack of detail on the wiretap authorization and ITO, and the reliance on second-hand identification evidence are all indicators that more information is needed to permit proper testing of admissibility and reliability.

Targeted disclosure ordered: wiretap, recordings, RCMP records, and CW status
On the facts, the judge finds that the SRROC fails to provide enough information about key aspects of the Canadian evidence, particularly the s. 184.2 authorization and the CW’s consent, the Brampton meeting recordings, and the CW’s status. Because the authorization was explicitly premised on the CW’s consent and that same witness now cannot be called, there is a realistic question whether the statutory preconditions for the authorization were actually met and whether the interceptions were Charter-compliant. Similarly, because the CW originally identified the participants and their roles in the Brampton and related meetings, and his testimony has now been removed from the case, independent identification and underlying source material must be available to assess whether the prosecution can fairly and lawfully proceed on derivative identification alone. The court therefore orders the AGC to produce several specific categories of material: the notes of Staff Sergeant MacQueen and other Canadian officers used in the Canadian investigation, including notes generated during the February 22, 2024 undercover operation; internal RCMP memoranda referenced in the RROC; all audio and video recordings made during the CW’s visit to Canada, including those from the February 22, 2024 Brampton meeting; the s. 184.2 authorization issued by the Quebec court, as well as the supporting affidavit and the source material relied upon; and confirmation that, in light of the SRROC’s removal of the CW’s evidence, the CW was in fact the person named in the defence materials and whether he is deceased. Justice Morgan permits the AGC, if necessary, to provide information about the CW’s status without disclosing his actual name or identifying details, to address any realistic safety concerns for his family. By contrast, the broader requests for “all material generated” in the Canadian investigation and in the undercover operation are denied as overly expansive and not tailored to specific, realistic allegations in the extradition setting.

Kidnapping of Gurpreet Singh and possible abuse of process
A separate but interrelated dimension is Singh’s kidnapping in Culiacan, Mexico, in August 2024. A prior Ontario bail decision and a U.S. Department of Justice bail letter describe Singh’s travel to Mexico to meet a cartel leader regarding a large drug debt, his subsequent kidnapping and detention for ransom, and negotiations involving his wife’s effort to raise ransom funds and Wedding’s reported intervention with the cartel. The timing coincides with the period when the CW’s phone and encrypted communications were being monitored, and when law enforcement on both sides of the border were running a coordinated investigation into the alleged conspiracy. The U.S. bail materials strongly suggest that authorities became aware of the kidnapping through real-time or near real-time review of encrypted messages. Singh’s counsel contends that if U.S. and possibly Canadian authorities knew that Singh was travelling into a high-risk situation connected to a drug debt and were monitoring communications about his kidnapping and ransom demands, their failure to warn, protect, or assist him could amount to an abuse of process that would shock the conscience of the court. While Justice Morgan does not decide that question on this motion, he finds there is at least an air of reality to the theory, sufficient to justify disclosure. He therefore orders production of any information gathered by Canadian law enforcement about the kidnapping, including what Canadian authorities knew before Singh left Canada, what they learned following his return, and any information exchanged between Canadian and foreign authorities concerning the incident. This disclosure is framed as necessary to explore whether there may have been an abuse of process under s. 7 of the Charter, potentially supporting a stay of proceedings at a later stage.

Outcome, successful party, and monetary consequences
In the result, the disclosure application is granted in part and dismissed in part. The court refuses the most sweeping requests for “all material generated” during the Canadian investigation and undercover operation, accepting the AGC’s position that such Stinchcombe-style disclosure is inappropriate in extradition. However, the judge orders the AGC to produce a suite of targeted materials central to the admissibility and reliability of the Canadian-gathered evidence and to the potential abuse-of-process claim, including RCMP notes, internal memoranda, all relevant audio and video recordings, the s. 184.2 authorization and its supporting materials, confirmation of the CW’s identity and status, and Canadian information relating to Singh’s kidnapping. In practical terms, the moving parties—Ratte and Singh—are the successful side on the key issues, as they obtain most of the specific disclosure necessary to test the SRROC and pursue Charter-based challenges, while the AGC’s blanket refusal approach is rejected. The judgment does not award damages, compensation, or quantified costs to any party; there is no monetary award specified in favour of the successful parties, and the total amount ordered cannot be determined because none is set out in this decision.