Harm reduction advocates hope high court will ‘clarify’ Canada’s ‘Good Samaritan’ law [Video]

Outside a rural Saskatchewan elementary school on a fall morning in 2020, Paul Wilson and three others parked their truck and called 911 as a woman they were with experienced a fentanyl overdose.

When police arrived, paramedics were already treating the woman. A Mountie who responded to the scene smelled marijuana from the vehicle and noticed a baggie which looked like crystal meth on the ground outside the driver’s side door.

Wilson was arrested for drug possession, and a search later turned up a bag with guns, false identity documents and a quantity of “apparent drugs.”

Wilson was convicted on multiple gun charges in 2022, but the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal found the drug possession arrest was unlawful under Canada’s Good Samaritan law, which is meant to shield people from arrest after they seek help for someone in medical distress.

The thorny legal questions raised by the case are now …