As the debate raged in the press and Parliament, the forum expanded to include the courts as most of the accused spies were tried for conspiracy to violate the Official Secrets Act. Several defendants attempted to challenge the legality of their confessions before the commission. In Raymond Boyer v the King, the Quebec appeals court ruled that "the appellant did not object to the questions put to him by the Royal Commission, and consequently the replies that he gave to the question put to him in the course of the inquiry could be pleaded and were admissible as evidence against him at trial." Attempts to have the judiciary consider the constitutionality of the commission and its tactics were rebuffed. In one of the earliest decisions on the admissibility of evidence, James C. McRuer of the Ontario High Court did not believe it was "at all clear that this court has, in these proceedings, any jurisdiction to review the conduct of the commission or to decide that a commission acting with apparent lawful jurisdiction has at any time by its conduct deprived itself of jurisdiction." His ruling effectively distanced the judiciary from ruling on the legitimacy of an order, operating in peacetime, responsible for violating a host of fundamental due process rights. Without any statutory or constitutional powers in the form of a Bill of Rights, the judiciary was in no position to challenge an order of the federal government, even one offensive to traditional freedoms.

Members of the legal profession were generally divided over the issue. At the 1946 meeting of the Canadian Bar Association, several members called for a motion to condemn the government’s actions. The association found itself in a difficult position; not only were several members hesitant to criticise two sitting judges of the Supreme Court of Canada, but its own president (E.K Williams) was the lead counsel for the espionage commission. Unwilling to openly criticise the commission, the association passed a motion calling on the government to avoid the use of judges in future royal commissions. R.W.M. Chitty, a Toronto lawyer and chair of the temporary civil liberties committee created during the war, had failed to convince the association to take a harsher stance; but the end result of the 1946 meeting was the creation of a permanent civil liberties sub-committee in the Canadian Bar Association.

Below is a brief summary of the results of the spy trials which took place between March 1946 and March 1947. Some individuals were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act (OSA) and others were charged with conspiracy to violate the OSA.  Because conspiracy was easier to prove in court than a direct violation of the OSA, individuals were charged with conspiracy when prosecutors had mostly circumstantial evidence.  Detailed biographical data on each suspect is available in the commission's final report (a brief biographical summary is also available on this site by clicking on the names of the individual suspects). Individuals are listed according to their appearance in the commission's three reports.

First Interim Report (2 March 1946)

Second Interim Report (14 March 1946)

Third Interim Report (28 March 1946)

Final Report (27 June 1946)

Philippe Brais (right), who represented the Crown in most of the spy trials, waits outside an Ottawa courtroom.