Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Self-represented applicant Bo Zhao sought a confidentiality (sealing) order to restrict public access to court records containing personal and financial information in his judicial review of a CERB eligibility decision.

• The open court principle, as reinforced by Sherman Estate v Donovan, presumes that all court proceedings and records are publicly accessible, with confidentiality orders being rare exceptions.

• Under the three-part Sherman Estate test, the applicant bore a heavy burden to prove a serious risk to an important public interest, necessity of the order, and proportionality of its benefits over negative effects.

• Court records in this proceeding were not subject to the Federal Court's online access pilot project, rendering the request to restrict online access both unnecessary and unfounded.

• No sworn evidence was tendered to substantiate the applicant's claims of identity theft or financial harm; the supporting affidavit addressed only the merits of the underlying judicial review rather than the sealing motion.

• Although the motion was dismissed, the Court ordered that the parties continue to redact the applicant's social insurance number, bank account numbers, and other identifying information from future filings.

Background and facts of the case
On February 3, 2026, Bo Zhao, a self-represented applicant, commenced an application for judicial review before the Federal Court of Canada challenging a decision of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) dated January 15, 2026, which found him ineligible for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). Shortly after initiating the proceeding, on February 10, 2026, Zhao served his supporting affidavit under Rule 306 on the Respondent, the Attorney General of Canada, and filed proof of service. The CRA then transmitted the Certified Tribunal Record (CTR) to the Registry and to Zhao on February 23, 2026.
On March 10, 2026, Zhao filed a motion seeking an order to seal the court records, or portions thereof, from public access. Specifically, he requested that the entire court file be excluded from online public access and electronic public search systems, or alternatively, that specific documents within the CTR be sealed. These documents included his personal tax returns from 2019 to 2022, paystubs and weekly earnings statements from Uber and Canada Post dated from March 1, 2020 to March 14, 2022, CRA agent responses and call plan records, and various letters containing his home address, phone numbers, and other personal identifiers of both himself and his wife. Zhao argued that these records contained highly sensitive personal and financial information, the exposure of which would create a serious risk of identity, financial harm, and an unnecessary invasion of privacy.
The applicant's motion and supporting evidence
Zhao's motion was supported by his own affidavit sworn on February 10, 2026 (the "Zhao Affidavit"). However, the Court noted that the affidavit did not contain any evidence substantiating his claims of privacy invasion, identity theft, or financial harm arising from public access to the court file. Instead, the Zhao Affidavit contained evidence relating to the merits of Zhao's underlying judicial review application regarding CERB eligibility. The Court observed that given the date on which the Zhao Affidavit was made and its contents, it appeared that Zhao may have filed his Rule 306 Affidavit in support of this motion.
Initially, Zhao's Notice of Motion sought only to restrict online public access, explicitly stating that he did not seek to close the courtroom or restrict access to in-person inspection subject to normal court procedures. However, at the oral hearing conducted via Zoom videoconference on March 17, 2026, Zhao altered his position and broadened his request to include protection of court records from both online and in-person access.
The respondent's position
The Attorney General of Canada opposed the motion on multiple grounds. With respect to online access, the Respondent submitted that the relief sought was already the current situation, as this matter was not subject to the Court's online access pilot project. The Respondent further argued that Zhao had not met any of the requirements of the test laid out in Sherman Estate. The Respondent did acknowledge that this Court has recognized that some tax information, such as a social insurance number, could pose a serious risk to the public interest of privacy, and accordingly, the CRA had proactively redacted Zhao's social insurance number from the CTR.
Governing legal principles and the open court principle
Associate Judge Kathleen Ring outlined the governing legal framework in detail. Court proceedings in Canada are presumptively open to the public, a principle repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in decisions such as Sierra Club of Canada v Canada (Minister of Finance), 2002 SCC 41, and Sherman Estate v Donovan, 2021 SCC 25. Rule 151 of the Federal Courts Rules permits the Court, on motion, to order that material to be filed shall be treated as confidential, but only where the Court is satisfied that confidentiality is warranted notwithstanding the public interest in open and accessible court proceedings.
The test for departing from the open court principle, as recast in Sherman Estate, requires the moving party to establish three elements: first, that court openness poses a serious risk to an important public interest; second, that the order sought is necessary to prevent this serious risk because reasonably alternative measures will not prevent this risk; and third, that as a matter of proportionality, the benefits of the order outweigh its negative effects. The Court emphasized that departing from the open court principle is an exceptional measure, and the moving party bears a heavy burden to demonstrate that each of the three elements have been met.
Analysis of online access
On the question of online access, the Court found Zhao's motion to be both unnecessary and unfounded. The Court's pilot project on online access to court records, launched on September 12, 2022, and governed by the Amended Consolidated General Practice Guidelines dated June 20, 2025, applies during its first phase only to records on court files in the areas of Maritime and Admiralty, Class Actions, Aboriginal law, and Intellectual Property law. Zhao's case, a judicial review of a CERB eligibility determination, does not fall within any of those categories. Furthermore, even if the case were covered by the pilot project, online access under the project is only available for specific categories of documents, namely pleadings and written arguments filed through the Court's e-filing portal, and does not extend to the CTR containing the documentary evidence that concerned Zhao. Accordingly, there was simply no risk of harm to an important public interest arising from the prospect of online access to documents on this court file.
Analysis of in-person access and the Sherman Estate test
Turning to in-person access to the physical court file, the Court assessed whether Zhao met the first element of the Sherman Estate test, namely whether court openness posed a serious risk to an important public interest. The Court acknowledged that Zhao genuinely regarded the information in the CTR as personal and private. However, relying on the Supreme Court of Canada's guidance in Sherman Estate, Associate Judge Ring noted that the Supreme Court has rejected the notion that an unbounded privacy interest qualifies as an important public interest. The relevant inquiry is not whether information is "personal" to the individual, but whether, because of its highly sensitive character, its dissemination would occasion an affront to their dignity that society as a whole has a stake in protecting, striking at the "biographical core of the individual."
The Court found that the seemingly unbounded privacy interest Zhao invoked did not qualify as an important public interest within the meaning of Sherman Estate, citing prior Federal Court authority in Rémillard v Canada (National Revenue), 2021 FC 644, which observed that if all financial and tax information had to be kept confidential, most if not all cases brought before the Tax Court of Canada would automatically be subject to a confidentiality requirement. Even assuming such an important interest existed, Zhao failed to substantiate his claim with sworn evidence. His supporting affidavit contained no evidence of privacy invasion, identity theft risk, or financial harm risk. The anecdotal accounts of suspicious phone calls he described at the hearing — one to himself from an unknown person who purportedly said she was from WCB and then the line was dropped, and another to his wife from an unknown person posing as a strata insurance broker who asked for personal information — were not set out in the Zhao Affidavit filed in support of the motion. Moreover, the Court found that even if these allegations had been presented as sworn evidence, they would not substantiate the claim that information contained in the court file exposed him to a serious risk of harm in the form of identity theft.
The Court also noted that the CTR contained a Certificate signed by the Acting Program Officer in the Canada Emergency Benefits section of the CRA Headquarters, attesting that the officer had redacted Zhao's social insurance number, bank account numbers, and other identifying information. Zhao did not dispute this attestation. Given these existing redactions and the absence of any sworn evidence to substantiate Zhao's claims, the Court concluded that public access to the records in the physical court file would not create a serious risk of identity theft or financial harm if a confidentiality order was not made.
Ruling and outcome
Having determined that Zhao failed to satisfy the first element of the Sherman Estate test, Associate Judge Ring found it was not necessary to address the remaining two elements of the test and declined to do so. The motion for a confidentiality order was dismissed. The Respondent, the Attorney General of Canada, was the successful party on this motion. Nevertheless, the Court ordered that the parties shall redact Zhao's social insurance number, bank account numbers, and other identifying information from any further documents to be filed in the proceeding, consistent with the redactions already made to the CTR. Neither party sought costs, and accordingly, no costs were awarded. No specific monetary amount was ordered in favor of either party in connection with this motion.