Can police search a person's phone after arrest?

Police can search a phone in some situations after an arrest, but there are real limits on when and how far that search can go. A search of a phone incident to arrest has to be genuinely connected to the reason for the arrest, it has to be limited in scope rather than a general trawl through everything on the device, and police are required to take detailed notes of what they looked at and why. In many other situations police need a warrant. A person is not required to give police a passcode or to unlock a device for them. This area of law comes from constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure rather than from provincial rules. Whether a particular search was lawful, and what that means for a particular case, is something only a lawyer reviewing the file can assess — the office goes through it with you on the call.