Nonetheless, you indignantly demand of the foreign government that it should follow Canadian practice, to the letter. You even petition a Canadian court to enforce Canadian standards and procedures in this foreign country.

How far do you think you would get with this argument, in either country's legal system?

Exactly. If you want the protection of Canadian law, it helps to be in a place where Canadian law actually applies. When you go to another country, you accept that the laws of that country apply to you, for as long as you are in that country. If you don't like its laws, don't go there.

That common-sense principle has just been resoundingly upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Karlheinz Schreiber, the businessman whose accounts with a Swiss bank have been at the centre of federal investigations into the Airbus affair. It was to gain access to Mr.

Schreiber's accounts that a Justice Department employee wrote the now- famous letter of request to the Swiss government, the one that accused Brian Mulroney - in collaboration with Mr. Schreiber and former Newfoundland Premier Frank Moores - of "criminal activity" in connection with a large order of airplanes from Air Canada.

That the letter should never have been made public is obvious. That it should not have used such inflammatory language in the absence of supporting evidence, even in a piece of private correspondence between police investigators, is arguable. But critics of the government's handling of the investigation go further. They assert that the letter should never have been sent at all.

Mr. Schreiber, in particular, went to court arguing that his rights as a Canadian citizen had been violated, on the grounds that the government of Canada failed to obtain a search warrant before asking the Swiss government to open his accounts. Had the accounts been held in Canada, he argued, police would have had to persuade a judge of the necessity of the search before invading his privacy in this way. Why should he not enjoy the same protection from unreasonable search and seizure, merely because the accounts were held in another country?

Because the accounts were held in another country, that's why. It's true that the government of Canada did not have a warrant. But the government of Canada did not search his records. The Swiss government did. All the Canadian investigators did was write a letter, for which no warrant is required.

Sophistry, say the government's critics: There is no difference between the government asking a third party to search someone's records and actually carrying out the search itself. Oh? I would have said it is the difference between the knock on the door and the battering ram. The police can always ask to enter my house, with or without a warrant. But nothing says I have to let them in. A warrant is only required in order for the police to enter over my objections.

Likewise, the Swiss were under no obligation, in the absence of any treaty of cooperation between the two countries, to agree to the Canadian government's request. If they chose to do so, that is something for Mr.

Schreiber to take up with the Swiss government, not the Canadian courts.

It's true that Swiss law allows the police to search a person's bank accounts without a warrant. But no one forced Mr. Schreiber to do his banking in Switzerland. If he was worried that Swiss law was deficient in this regard - he could hardly have been unaware of the provision - he should have stayed at home. As Chief Justice Antonio Lamer wrote in his decision, "a person who has property or records in a foreign state runs a risk that a search will be carried out in accordance with the laws of that state." What Mr. Schreiber was asking the court to do was, in effect, to enforce Canadian law in Switzerland. Indeed, if his argument were to prevail, it would actually be harder for the police to gain access to an overseas bank account than a Canadian one: for having obtained a warrant, they would still have to negotiate the cooperation of the foreign authorities. In many countries that would still not be enough: the foreign government would then have to obtain a warrant from its own courts.

It is a bit much to expect the protection of Canadian law should extend to foreign soil; it is absurd to demand an even higher standard of protection.