. Ontario Addiction Treatment Centres v. Canada (Attorney General)
In Ontario Addiction Treatment Centres v. Canada (Attorney General) (Fed CA, 2023) the Federal Court of Appeal considered an appeal from a JR of a refusal to grant a "request for remission of tax under subsection 23(2) of the (SS: federal) Financial Administration Act".
Here the court comments briefly on the 'open court' principle, and makes a useful practice point:
[11] The Federal Court erred in closing the whole hearing. The default is that court proceedings are open. Any secrecy must be necessary, justified and minimized: Sherman Estate v. Donovan, 2021 SCC 25 458 D.L.R. (4th) 361; Sierra Club of Canada v. Canada (Minister of Finance), 2002 SCC 41, [2002] 2 S.C.R. 522.
[12] In the Federal Court, the submissions containing confidential information were only a small part of the hearing. At most, it should have closed only a small part of its hearing. In fact, in this Court it was possible to keep the hearing open for all but a few minutes. One way to do this is to invite counsel in the course of their public oral submissions on this point, if necessary, to draw the Court’s attention to paragraphs in the confidential memoranda filed and then to make their points orally without disclosing the confidential information.
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