METIS NATION OF ALBERTA ASSOCIATION v ALBERTA (MINISTER OF INDIGENOUS RELATIONS), 2026 ABKB 630

This decision arose from a dispute concerning the contents of the record for the Métis Nation of Alberta Association (“MNA”)’s Application for Judicial Review of an administrative decision recognizing the Lac Ste. Anne Métis Community Association (“LSA”) for duty-to-consult purposes. LSA sought to exclude certain materials that it had provided to Alberta during the administrative process, relying on statutory disclosure restrictions, case-by-case privilege, and relevance. In the alternative, LSA sought a restricted court-access Order over portions of the record. MNA and Alberta took the position that the complete record should be produced.

Justice Lema considered the requirements for the record of proceedings under Rules 3.18 and 3.19. The Court held that the content of a Judicial Review record was generally broad and was generally required to include all evidence that had been before the administrative decision maker, so that the reviewing Court could assess the decision in light of the material actually considered. The Court emphasized the importance of the evidentiary record to meaningful Judicial Review.

Lema J. rejected LSA’s argument that statutory disclosure restrictions required materials to be excluded from the record. The applicable access-to-information legislation expressly did not limit information otherwise available by law to a party to legal proceedings, while the statutory restrictions concerning vital-statistics information did not govern the subsequent treatment of information once it had lawfully been provided to another person. The Court also rejected LSA’s claim of case-by-case privilege. An expectation or request that information would remain confidential was insufficient without an assurance from the recipient that confidentiality would be maintained. As Alberta had provided no assurance that the information would be withheld from a subsequent Judicial Review record, the first requirement for case-by-case privilege was not established.

The Court also rejected LSA’s argument that portions of the material should be excluded as irrelevant. Because MNA challenged the reasonableness of Alberta’s decision, the full record before the decision maker was required to permit the Court to assess the decision in the context of the evidence on which it had been made. The Court found no basis to conclude that the decision maker had considered only a subset of the information and held that the information submitted by LSA in support of its Application for recognition bore on the reasonableness issue and formed part of the Judicial Review record.

Justice Lema therefore directed that the complete record be produced. To address concerns about collateral use of sensitive information, Lema J. treated MNA’s position that the implied Undertaking rule applied as an effective undertaking that the record would be used only for the Judicial Review and, alternatively, found that MNA was subject to an equivalent implied obligation of confidentiality. The Court also granted a restricted court-access Order under Rule 6.28 over much of the sensitive information, but excluded individual LSA members’ names from the Order because disclosure of membership alone did not establish sufficient harm to privacy or dignity when balanced against the open Court principle.