Disclosing identities of parties who received examination information could cause irreparable harm

Plaintiff oversaw administration of examination used by Canadian medical schools to select candidates for medical school clinical residency programs and assessed international medical graduates who wished to practice medicine in Canada. Plaintiff alleged defendant E and his company, who offered preparatory course to international medical graduate students for taking examination, conspired to appropriate confidential clinical examination exercised used by plaintiff in examination, which plaintiff alleged allowed certain international medical students to obtain artificially higher markers on examinations and improperly gain admissions to Canadian residency programs. Plaintiff brought application for sealing order over documentation that could reveal content of examinations, identify non-party witnesses and contained personal information about individual defendants and their children. Application granted. While there was strong public interest in knowing about any threats or compromises to integrity of examination system relied upon to insure competence of medical graduates who would be staffing residency programs in hospitals and medical clinics, disclosure of information sought to be sealed would create serious risk of disclosure and misuse of highly confidential information. Order for partial restriction would minimally impair open court principle. Revealing content of examinations would result in damage to reliability, integrity and validity of examination and undermine efficacy of examination process, and integrity of process was essential or public interest in ensuring competency of medical graduate entering health care system. Non-party who disclosed misconduct would be at potential risk if identity disclosed, and there was no public interest in disclosure of witness’ identity. There was no public interest in disclosing personal details about defendants and doing so could expose defendants to harassment. Disclosing identities of parties who allegedly received examination information from defendants could cause irreparable harm to their professional reputations.

Medical Council of Canada v. Elmansy (2019), 2019 CarswellOnt 3296, 2019 ONSC 1622, C.T. Hackland J. (Ont. S.C.J.).