Crown drops sex offender registry charge against former Nova Scotia police chief

A former Nova Scotia police chief convicted in 2020 of sexually exploiting a 17-year-old girl is no longer facing a charge of failing to comply with an order under the Sex Offender Information Registration Act.

John Collyer was charged with violating the act in September 2025 and he was supposed to stand trial this week in a provincial court in Bridgewater, N.S., where he used to be police chief.

But on Monday, Crown prosecutor Hannah Cameron told Judge James Burrill that the Crown was withdrawing the charge, saying there was no public interest in proceeding with the case. She did not elaborate.

Burrill dismissed the charge, but it remains unclear what Collyer was accused of in 2025. The section of the Criminal Code cited in court documents does not offer much guidance.

On March 4, 2020, Collyer was sentenced to 15 months in jail for sexually exploiting a 17-year-old girl when he was deputy chief of the Bridgewater Police Service.

He was also sentenced to one year of probation and his DNA profile was to be added to the national sex offender registry for 20 years.

At the conclusion of Collyer’s trial, the victim told the court that the senior police officer was like a father to her when she and her mother moved to Nova Scotia and were in need support. She was 12 years old at the time.

But by the time she turned 15, the senior police officer admitted he couldn’t trust himself around her, she said.

During Collyer’s trial, a psychiatrist testified that at the time of the offence, the girl had an intellectual and emotional age between 10 and 12 years old.

The court also heard that the girl’s mother gave investigators screen shots of sexually suggestive online messages that Collyer had sent to the girl.

At the conclusion of the trial, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Mona Lynch said the intent of those messages was to groom the girl for sexual contact.

The victim, whose identity is protected by a standard publication ban, told investigators that sometime in the spring of 2016, she and Collyer were driving in his car when he reached between her legs, pushed aside her skirt and sexually assaulted her.

The girl said she did not give her consent.

The 26-year veteran of the police force was originally charged in May 2017 with sexual assault and two counts of sexual exploitation, but one of the exploitation charges was withdrawn.

Sexual exploitation involves the sexual touching of a minor by a person in a position of trust or authority.

Collyer was tried on one count of sexual assault and one of sexual exploitation. Lynch found him guilty of both crimes, but she ordered a conditional stay on the sexual assault conviction based on the principle that an accused cannot be convicted of two offences arising from the same actions.

The former senior officer was granted full parole in August 2020,