SCC File No. 40465

held in Paterson, the critical limit here is urgency.3 When we unpack the content of urgency in the context of exigent circumstances, it demands that the targeted risk be imminent such that the police must react on the sudden.4 In other words, the danger to public safety must be (1) imminent, and (2) contemporaneous to the police reaction to that very danger. [...] It was open to the trial judge to accept the evidence of the officers that they believed that, had this drug transaction already in progress not been rerouted in the manner they chose, the appellant would have aborted the operation. [...] In other words, the urgency demanded by Paterson would have dissipated because the police had already arrested the person on the other end of the drug transaction. [...] The Crown’s submissions employ language that attempts to broaden the scope of urgency in Paterson to include police investigative expediency: a) “it would have taken too long to obtain a warrant and the deal would have been lost.”16 b) The police used the phone “to continue a drug transaction that was already underway.”17 c) The police communicated “for the limited purpose of facilitating the tran. [...] Campbell was in possession of fentanyl.25 Hence, aside from the urgency of losing the drug transaction, the lower courts considered the “notoriously harmful” nature of the fentanyl to conclude that the police were acting in exigent circumstances.26 22.