The applicant, Air Passenger Rights, brought an application challenging the constitutionality of subsection 85.09(1) of the Canada Transportation Act, which imposes a blanket confidentiality requirement on the new Complaint Resolution Officer (CRO) process for air passenger disputes.
The applicant argued this violated the open court principle and section 2(b) of the Charter.
The court found that the CRO process is an adjudicative tribunal to which the open court principle applies, and that the confidentiality provision infringes section 2(b).
The government failed to justify the infringement under section 1, as the blanket confidentiality was not minimally impairing or necessary for efficiency.
The court ordered the provision read down so that confidentiality only applies to optional mediation steps, not adjudicative records.
