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FOI - 'Open Court' Principle. Fraser et al. v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) et al.
In Fraser et al. v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) et al. (Fed CA, 2023) the Federal Court of Appeal considers an appeal from an unusual multi-party Access to Information Act (AIA) statutory de novo 'review' [under s.44(1)] (neither an appeal nor a JR) at the Federal Court.
In these quotes, the court makes the important point that the 'open court' principle does not apply to AIA-scheduled institutions [see para 55] (a principle which may apply to Ontario FIPPA/MFIPPA as well):D. If the Withheld Information does contain personal information, did the Federal Court fall into palpable and overriding error in not disclosing those documents pursuant to the open court principle?
[54] The Families argued that the material in the Parole Board’s hands, including audio recordings and the documents that the Board considered in dealing with Mr. Munro’s and Mr. Bernardo’s applications for parole, should have been released pursuant to the open court principle.
[55] The open court principle does not apply to Corrections Canada as it is a government institution listed in Schedule 1 to the AIA. Its mission is to operate correctional institutions for offenders with a view to returning them to society as law-abiding citizens. In the course of that mandate, it collects information and creates records about the persons in its charge for the purpose of managing their experience so as to achieve its ultimate mission. As the list of the records it creates and maintains set out in paragraph 45 above indicates, most if not all of that information is personal information. It is not a tribunal, let alone an adjudicative tribunal, and is therefore not subject to the open court principle.
[56] This Court dealt with the application of the open court principle to the Parole Board in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation v. Parole Board of Canada, 2023 FCA 166, [CBC] released contemporaneously with these reasons. In that decision, the Court examined the jurisprudence underlying the application of the open court principle to administrative tribunals. The Court found that the application of that principle to a tribunal based on whether it was quasi-judicial was no longer relevant. It decided instead that a better indicator of whether the open court principle applied was whether the tribunal in question was an adjudicative tribunal, that is, a tribunal that presided over adversarial proceedings in which questions of rights and obligations were decided.
[57] The Federal Court agreed with the Parole Board when it said that it was not subject to the open court principle because the proceedings before it were not adversarial but inquisitorial. The fact that the state’s interest was not represented before the Board was indicative of the absence of adversarial proceedings. In addition, the Board argued that it did not adjudicate rights but rather assessed risk.
[58] In their memorandum of fact and law, the Families write at length about the open court principle, but their submissions are unpersuasive. For example, they argue that the open court principle has equal application to all administrative tribunals, including the Parole Board, as the legitimacy of their proceedings can be effectively monitored only if their proceedings are open to the public, citing Southam Inc. v. Canada Minister of Employment and Immigration, 1987 CanLII 9001 (FC), [1987] 3 F.C. 329, 13 F.T.R. 138 (T.D.) [Southam]. Of course, Board hearings are open to the public. As for Southam, it dealt with the application of the open court principle to quasi-judicial tribunals. The Families go on to rely on Justice Morgan’s learned decision in Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. v. Ontario (Attorney General), 2018 ONSC 2586, 142 O.R. (3d) 266, but that case concerned 13 adjudicative tribunals, all of which are designated as “institutions” in the Schedule to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, a designation which created the conflict between those tribunals and the freedom of information legislation.
[59] Other cases which the Families relied on all dealt with the application of the open court principle to courts of law: Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. v. Ontario, 2005 SCC 41, [2005] 2 S.C.R. 188 (application in the Ontario Court of Justice), Sierra Club of Canada v. Canada (Minister of Finance), 2002 SCC 41, [2002] 2 S.C.R. 522 (application in the Federal Court of Canada), CTV Television Inc. v. Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Toronto Region) (2002), 2002 CanLII 41398 (ON CA), 59 O.R. (3d) 18, 5 C.R. (6th) 189 (C.A.) (application in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice), Edmonton Journal v. Alberta (Attorney General), 1989 CanLII 20, [1989] 2 S.C.R 1326, (Alberta Judicature Act), Sherman Estate (application in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice).
[60] In addition, none of those cases holds that privacy interests must always be subordinated to the open court principle. The Sherman Estate case says the opposite:... Further, in assessing the constitutionality of a legislative exception to the open court principle, this Court has recognized that the protection of individual privacy can be a pressing and substantial objective (Edmonton Journal, at p. 1345, per Cory J.; see also the concurring reasons of Wilson J., at p. 1354, in which “the public interest in protecting the privacy of litigants generally in matrimonial cases against the public interest in an open court process” was explicitly noted). …
... In F.N. (Re), this was the personal interest that young offenders had in remaining anonymous in court proceedings as a means of encouraging their personal rehabilitation (para. 11). All of society had a stake, according to Binnie J., in the young person’s personal prospect for rehabilitation. This same idea from F.N. (Re) was cited in support of finding the interest in Sierra Club to be a public interest. …
Sherman Estate at paras. 52–53 [61] In the result, the Families have not shown that the open court principle applies to the Parole Board or to Corrections Canada. In CBC, this Court found that the CBC was not entitled to copies of audio recordings of Parole Board hearings pursuant to the open court principle.
[62] In light of the conclusion that the Parole Board is not an adjudicative tribunal, the question of the production of adjudicative records does not arise. As a result, the Families are not entitled to what they seek from the Parole Board pursuant to the open court principle.
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