Although police and prosecutors should generally be given the benefit of the doubt, it cannot be assumed they always act in good faith in performing their duties. Case in point: the 2002 arrest and strip search of Vancouver lawyer Cameron Ward. No common sense argument can be made that Vancouver police were acting in good faith when they detained Mr. Ward on suspicion he possessed a pie he wanted to plant in the face of then prime minister Jean Chrétien.

Mr. Ward was walking away from the prime minister’s event when he was stopped by police. They seized his car and searched it for the errant pastry, but found none, so they then hauled Mr. Ward down to the station where they made him disrobe to his underwear to prove he had no concealed tarts.

Moreover, all Mr. Ward asked for following his head-scratching treatment was an apology. Had one been forthcoming, it might have shown that the police were, indeed, acting in good faith. But, alas, Vancouver’s taxpayers have since been forced to cough up tens of thousands of dollars to defend their force’s heavy-handed behaviour against Mr. Ward’s demand for $5,000 in compensation.

In their submission to the Supreme Court of Canada on Monday, city lawyers argued financial compensation for the violation of Mr. Ward’s Charter rights “would threaten the entire criminal justice system.” They claimed that if everyone wrongfully arrested were entitled to compensation, the cost would disable the municipal government.

But what about the damage the city is doing to the justice system by bringing it into disrepute? Vancouver’s pig-headedness in the name of protecting bad police behaviour is jeopardizing the public’s faith in the impartiality of local justice, which is far more damaging than Mr. Ward’s example would be, even if it were multiplied by 1,000 or 100,000 copycat complainants.

We accept that awarding compensation to those wrongfully arrested or convicted is no easy matter. Prosecutors and law enforcement officers have to operate free of fear that their every move must be correct in advance lest the government that employs them has to pay out millions to grieving detainees or prisoners.

Still, protection from malicious or incompetent prosecution is among every Canadians’ fundamental rights. It is unacceptable to brush off every Cameron Ward as a pot-hunter or point-making activist.

Perhaps the line should be drawn between those merely arrested without cause and those wrongfully convicted who must spend time in jail for crimes they did not commit. In cases, such as Mr. Ward’s, where he was never charged, the onus would be on the complainant to show his treatment was never based on good-faith performance by public officials.

But consider the cases of Robert Baltovich and Anthony Hanemaayer, two Ontario men who spent nine years and two years in prison, respectively, for murders and sexual assaults they did not commit. In a decision that parallels Vancouver’s, the Ontario Attorney General last week refused compensation for the pair because prosecutors and police “acted with integrity and in the best interests of the administration of justice.”

So? All that means is that prosecutors and officers did their best, and so should not be held criminally or civilly responsible for their mistakes. Yet mistakes were made by state actors and innocent people were deprived of their freedom — in one case for nearly a decade. Compensation should be mandatory. Governments should not compound their initial mistakes — no matter how well-intentioned — by burdening those who wasted large chunks of their lives in jail with long civil court cases to extract money for their lost time. Attorneys-general should come up with standards by which to determine what compensation the wrongfully accused are entitled to.

No one needs to be blamed. Prosecutors and peace officers may still be assumed to have acted in good faith even if their actions led to an erroneous result. But innocent citizens who end up deprived of their liberty in such cases are not bad-faith actors, either. Why should they have to pay for the Crown’s mistakes?

A heartfelt “sorry,” isn’t enough. Meaningful compensation should be mandatory for those incorrectly imprisoned.