R v Jalili, 2018 ONSC 6408 (Ahktar):

[63] The Crown did not breach its disclosure obligations because the defence failed to meet its burden to show that the notes met the Flis requirements. If Mr. Thorning was seeking further information regarding the contact between Det. McInnis and the complainant, it was incumbent on him “to meet the burden of demonstrating a reasonable possibility that the material could be used in meeting the Crown’s case or advancing a defence or otherwise making a decision which could affect the conduct of the defence”: Flis, at paras. 112-13.

[64] However, at trial, Mr. Thorning conceded that he did not know what information might be
contained in the notes. He claimed that there was “some good information, valuable information
that may arise from these contacts”. Later on, he added that if the officer “had contacts with the
complainant and doesn’t remember, the reason why she doesn’t remember is a relevant factor to
some future application that may or may not be brought”. At no point, did Mr. Thorning ever specifically define the “future application”. Nor did the judge ever ask.

[65] In R. v. Chaplin, [1995] 1 S.C.R. 727, the court indicated that once the Crown asserted that it had made full disclosure, it could not be required to justify non-disclosure of material of which it was unaware or claimed did not exist. The court added, at para. 30, that:
The existence of the disputed material must be sufficiently identified not only to reveal its nature but also to enable the presiding judge to determine that it may meet the test with respect to material which the Crown is obliged to produce as set out above in the passages which I have quoted from Stinchcombe and Egger, supra.

[66] The court made clear that fishing expeditions and conjecture must be separated from
legitimate disclosure requests.

[67] Here, the Crown indicated that it was unaware of any notes of conversations between Det.
McInnis and the complainant, and further, disputed the conversations’ relevance. At that point, in
accordance with Chaplin, the defence had the burden to demonstrate the existence of potentially
relevant further material. In this case, Mr. Thorning could not identify the relevance of the conversations between the complainant and Det. McInnis because he did not know what it was. In his view it “may or may not” have been relevant. This is the very essence of fishing expeditions proscribed in Chaplin and Girimonte, at p. 623.