Can a Minister or a civil servant be deemed confidential?

However, there is another line of authority which takes a different view. In Ottawa Football Club v. Canada (Minister of Fitness and Amateur Sport), Strayer, J, as he then was, held that the voluntarily submitted material marked "confidential" remained subject to the right of access in the Act. He said as follows: ...it is not enough to state that their submission is confidential in order to make it so in an objective sense. Such a principle would surely undermine much of the purpose of this Act which in part is to make available to the public the information upon which government action is taken or refused. Nor would it be consistent with that purpose if a Minister or his officials were able to exempt information from disclosure simply by agreeing when it is submitted that it would be treated as confidential Ottawa Football Club v. Canada (Minister of Fitness and Amateur Sport), [1989] 2 F.C. 480 (F.C.T.D.) at page 487.