Certainly.
I would actually take you back first to a more general statement by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, who herself has brought forward the idea that we have now such a context of dissemination of information that the open court principle has taken a meaning that goes way beyond what was originally envisaged.
The open court principle is there to shed light on the court--not necessarily on the parties--and to hold the court accountable. The situation now is that the posting of decisions on the Internet actually sheds light on the parties, and when you bring this specifically to the context of federal administrative tribunals—tribunals that deal with very personal and sensitive information, such as disability, grievances, and discrimination—the posting on the Internet may actually bring a cost to privacy that goes far beyond the public interest served.
I would like to share with you a simple anecdote. I received an email this summer from someone asking me for advice, saying that they had just found out that their grievance to a federal administrative tribunal was about to proceed and that they understood the decision could be posted on the Internet. Since they had alleged issues of discrimination, they were afraid that if indeed the decision were posted, it could hurt their career in the future. The person asked if I thought they should drop the grievance in light of that. Of course my answer was that I could not take that decision for them, but they should assume that it would be posted on the Internet, because we have not been successful yet in bringing the kind of discretion we would like to see.
The reason I share this anecdote with you is that I thought it brought to the fore the possibility of inhibiting access to administrative justice for the reason that the Internet has brought a differential impact on privacy that goes beyond what was originally anticipated or envisaged.