Is confidentiality an obligation of a lawyer to keep confidential all communications between lawyers and clients confidential?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Canada (Public Prosecution Service) v. J.G.C., 2014 BCSC 557 (CanLII):

With respect, this submission seems to conflate the concepts of solicitor-client privilege (see Solosky v. The Queen 1979 CanLII 9 (SCC), [1980] 1 S.C.R. 821, at 829) and confidentiality. There is no doubt that lawyers are under an obligation to keep confidential all documents and other communications made to them by their clients, but not all such communications are subject to solicitor-client privilege and a claim of privilege does not convert non-privileged documents into privileged documents. If authority is needed for this point, reference may be made to Branch, where the majority stated: …a solicitor-client privilege cannot be claimed for all documents that have passed between solicitor and client for the purpose of obtaining legal advice unless the documents were brought into existence for this purpose. If a document is not privileged when the party to litigation receives it, merely depositing a copy of the document with a party's solicitor or making a copy of that document by the solicitor for litigious purposes would not make it privileged… [para. 43]

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