The Plate Was Photographed in a Jail Parking Lot, and Four Hands Later a Toronto Constable Ran It Through a Police Database: Justice Laura Bird Unseals Part of the Project South ITO (September 17, 2026)

TORONTO — A publication ban came partly off the Project South information to obtain on Wednesday, and what came out from behind it is a route. Ontario Superior Court Justice Laura Bird, ruling on an application by a media consortium, released a decision on September 16, 2026 loosening the ban on parts of the York Regional Police ITO. Global News published the material at five o’clock Thursday morning; CP24 followed at 9:46 a.m. The ITO alleges that a licence plate belonging to a Toronto South Detention Centre employee was photographed in the jail’s own parking lot by a guard, handed to an inmate, moved outward through the inmate’s associates, and finally run through a police database by a serving Toronto Police Service constable — producing the home address that a gun-for-hire network is alleged to have needed. Not one step of that chain has been tested in court.

What separates this from the Project South material already on the record is that the earlier disclosures established that an address had been looked up. The unsealed ITO purports to establish how the plate reached the person who looked it up, and it names every hand along the way.

What Justice Bird Said About Letting It Out

Bird did not lift the ban wholesale. She kept a temporary publication ban over some portions, balancing the openness of the courts against the fair-trial rights of twenty-seven accused. On what she did release, CP24 reports her as writing that the “importance of public scrutiny in this case cannot be overstated,” and that what is “perhaps, most concerning” is “the fact that the York Regional Police only stumbled upon it in the course of their investigation into the conspiracy to murder the correctional officer.” She added that a “trusted public official can engage in widespread illegal conduct and go undetected,” and that “The public can only hold their community police services accountable if they are aware of the full extent of the allegations against the Project South defendants.”

That last line is the reason this briefing exists. The corruption allegations, on the judge’s own account, were not what anyone set out to find. They surfaced because somebody tried to have a jail employee killed and the investigation into that attempt went looking for who had pulled his address.

The Guard and the Inmate

The ITO devotes considerable space to the relationship between Dosanjh and Singh, because the relationship is what the police belief about the plate rests on. Her supervisor, according to the document, “described these sustained encounters as well outside the norm for inmate / CO contact,” and investigators wrote that “Singh appears to exercise a degree of influence if not power over Dosanjh, which is anomalous given their roles.”

The numbers are the part that will travel. Dosanjh is alleged to have arranged her schedule to work Singh’s wing “as much as possible” and to have spent “extraordinarily long periods” with him. Surveillance video showed them “engaging in prolonged conversations.” Nine separate conversations are itemised for October and November 2025. Across a longer window — October 22, 2025 to January 25, 2026 — the ITO counts 156 separate interactions, three of them running over an hour. And in April 2025, months before the break-in, a colleague at the institution filed a report after becoming “suspicious,” saying Dosanjh had described Singh giving her “expensive gifts, payments for cosmetic surgery and travel.”

From that, investigators drew the inference that carries the file: “This relationship, combined with Dosanjh’s access, motive, and the flow of information between these parties, supports the belief that Dosanjh was the originating source of the licence plate information.” And on the onward route: “This sequence of events supports the belief that the photographed licence plate information was passed from Dosanjh to Singh, relayed to Da Costa … and subsequently circulated among Singh’s associates.”

Note what those two sentences are. They are statements of investigative belief written to persuade a justice to issue a warrant. They are not findings.

Where Ryan Wedding Comes Into It

Gurpreet Singh is the point of contact between this file and a much larger one. Police say Singh has links to the Ryan Wedding enterprise, and United States authorities accuse Singh of helping coordinate cocaine shipments for the former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged international trafficker. Singh was arrested in connection with that alleged network and is fighting extradition to the United States.

Investigators allege Singh had a motive to arrange the shooting of the correctional officer and used a web of connections to arrange it. CP24 puts the framing more bluntly: the attempted hit was “originally called for by a man who is facing charges in connection with the alleged drug trafficking ring helmed by former Canadian Olympian Ryan Wedding.”

Singh’s lawyer answers the ITO with the calendar. “The fact that Mr. Singh has not been charged with any offence in Canada more than four months after the execution of the warrants is the clearest response to the allegations contained in the information to obtain.”

The Cocaine Allegations Attached to the Officers

The unsealed material also carries allegations that have nothing to do with the murder plot and everything to do with the judge’s point about stumbling onto things. Per CP24, the personal vehicles of Barnhardt, Constable Saurabjit Bedi and others were allegedly used to “repeatedly commit” drug trafficking offences, including dealing cocaine to one another. Intercepted communications between Bedi and Barnhardt are said to have “demonstrated repeated and ongoing discussions regarding the acquisition, pricing, weighing, quality and redistribution of cocaine,” and to have been “corroborated by surveillance observations of Bedi and Barnhardt meeting in person at commercial plazas and other locations, where Bedi was observed purchasing, possessing and consuming cocaine, as well as reselling previously acquired cocaine back to Barnhardt.”

Separately, the group is alleged to have conspired to head off bylaw inspectors while starting a ring of marijuana dispensaries and erotic massage parlours, with Barnhardt allegedly tasked with finding locations, giving advance notice of inspections, coordinating cash bribes to police and bylaw officers, and using police databases to shield the sites. CP24 also alleges he “routinely sold confidential database information to known criminal associate Da Costa, often at Da Costa’s direction.”

The Denials, and What Has Not Been Established

Dosanjh’s lawyer says she “denies any allegations of criminal or professional misconduct and adamantly maintains her complete innocence,” that she “cooperated fully with investigators, including by providing investigators with unfettered access to the contents of a cellular phone that was seized from her residence,” and that she “has not been charged criminally, and there is no indication criminal charges will ever be laid.” Her counsel says she has been on paid leave since February, when she made allegations against a colleague. Barnhardt’s lawyer declined to comment. Da Costa’s lawyer did not immediately respond to The Canadian Press.

Global News states the caveat plainly: none of the allegations or evidence involving Singh or Dosanjh has been heard by a jury or tested in court, and the claims are initial beliefs held by police as they sought a search warrant. CP24 adds that the allegations have not been tested in court. Both statements apply to everything in this briefing.

One Figure Worth Flagging

The two outlets count the officers differently. Global News describes the February 2026 announcement as the arrest of seven serving Toronto police officers and one retired officer, among others. CP24 and The Canadian Press report twenty-seven suspects charged overall, including eight active and retired officers. Seven plus one is eight, so the two are reconcilable — but the figure of twenty-seven appears only in the wire copy, and this briefing carries it on that single attribution rather than as a police-confirmed total. Separately, a Globe and Mail headline indicates that the transcripts which triggered Project South in the first place remain under publication ban.