ABSTRACT
The Honorable Madame Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dubé was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1987 after serving for 14 years as a trial and appellate-court judge. She was the second woman appointed to the Court and was, at her retirement in 2002, the Court's longest-serving justice. This chapter draws out the relationship between the notions of privacy, confidentiality, and equality; it examines this nexus in the particular context of issues surrounding the production, in sexual-assault cases, of complainants' personal records that are held by third parties. It follows three moments in the history of these issues in Canada and argues that this history provides vital lessons about the meaning and significance of equality rights. The first moment in this history is Justice L'Heureux-Dube's dissent in R. v. O'Connor, the second is the legislative affirmation of those reasons in Bill C-46. The third is the majority confirmation of her position in R. v. Mills. Justice Berman of the United States Supreme Court spoke of dissents in which authors speak as “prophets of honor.” The judicial and legislative history outlined in this chapter show that Justice L'Heureux-Dube's dissent was indeed honorable and prophetic.
