Are Ontarians Being Watched by Drones?

That’s the question raised by Kingston resident Ms. Laurie Esseltine, who shared her experience dating back a few months, with the press yesterday. She recounted an encounter with law enforcement while driving one day, when she noticed a drone flying overhead and felt as if it were watching her.

This story resurfaced in the news yesterday, even though the incident occurred in May of last year.

The Backstory: On May 7, 2025, Esseltine was idling at a red light in Kingston, Ontario, when she spotted a drone hovering above her vehicle, with no visible pilot. Concerned, she picked up her phone. “My first thought was to take a picture of this and report it,” Esseltine recalled. “It was frightening, and then I thought, ‘What are they doing? You can’t do that.'”

She snapped two photos, then put her phone back down and waited for the light to change.

As she proceeded through the intersection, a police cruiser pulled up behind her, and she received a citation for distracted driving—based on the image of her picking up her phone to take a picture of the drone, which served as evidence of her “crime.”

She was one of 20 drivers ticketed that day and faced severe penalties under the Highway Traffic Act: a $615 fine, three demerit points, and the possibility of a three-day license suspension.

In January of this year, municipal prosecutor Rikki Voskamp was questioned about the incident but declined to comment. However, the increased media attention on the case proved effective.

On February 09, the charge against Esseltine was withdrawn, and another drone-related ticket issued that day was also dismissed without explanation. It remains unclear whether the other 20 motorists ticketed that day had similar outcomes.

In an attempt to address the situation, the Kingston Police explained that this was the “first time” they had used a drone—and it would also be the last.

While this entire episode may sound like a scene from a dystopian sci-fi movie, it is an all-too-real incident that prompts us to consider some critical questions. For instance, what else are police drones monitoring? Why didn’t this story receive more coverage when it occurred? And perhaps the most pressing question of all: “If a drone can record motorists from the sky, how safe are we in our homes, which are supposed to be private spaces?”

Reacting to these queries, Josh Dehaas, the litigation director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), a charity dedicated to defending the constitutional rights of Canadians, stated that using drones to zoom in on drivers is a “violation of the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures” as outlined in Section Eight of the Charter.

He emphasized that this whole event raises broader questions. “We really need to consider whether we want to live in a society where police can use drones to spy on what we’re doing inside our cars,” Dehaas said.

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