Yesterday the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal granted an order prohibiting the public disclosure of confidential business information belonging to the defendants in an action. It held that the motions judge erred by ruling out the order because the moving parties had a commercial interest in keeping the the relevant information secret. A concurrent public interest, according to the Court, will suffice:
That D+H and Resolve have a specific private interest does not exclude the existence of a concurrent public interest. The two are not mutually exclusive. In Sierra Club, Justice Iacobucci said (para 55) “the interest in question cannot merely be specific to the party requesting the order; the interest must be one which can be expressed in terms of a public interest in confidentiality” [emphasis added]. The question is whether D+H/Resolve’s clear private interest also can be expressed in terms of a public interest in confidentiality.
Here, the Court recognized the public interest in the integrity of a government tendering process and, after weighing competing interests as called for by the Sierra Club case, granted the order.
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