Legality of Recording Conversations

This web site has information about the legality of recording private conversations without the consent of the other party. Note, however, that it doesn't speak about the legality of broadcasting a private conversation without such consent. So, you could rely on this to get notes for a story, but not necessarily for clips for a broadcast. http://www.legaltree.ca/node/908

Highlights of the site:

"...broadly speaking, Canadians can legally record their own conversations with other people, but not other peoples' conversations that they are not involved in."

"...any intended recipient of a communication is entitled to record it."

Although it is legal for Canadians to record conversations that they are involved in, it is illegal for them to possess surreptitious recording devices. ... Thus, Canadian can record their own conversations, but should do so with regular recording devices such as dictaphones, tape recorders, ipods etc."

This law applies to conversations between people who are both (or all) in Canada, only.

Police can't gather evidence this way without a warrant. The law now "specifically requires state agents to obtain prior judicial authorization for interceptions based on the consent of one of the parties." However, "Various Canadian cases have admitted recordings made by civilians into evidence where it was found that the civilians were not acting as state agents at the time of the recording." Hence, recordings made of the hockey rioters by civilians could be admissible as evidence in court.