Court orders oil spill documents sealed to investigators
A judge has decided numerous documents pertaining to the Husky Energy oil spill in 2016, which affected multiple communities along the North Saskatchewan River, will remain sealed to Environment Canada investigators.
A search warrant was executed in March of 2017 where over 25,000 electronic records were handed over to investigators. Husky Energy asserted privilege over 580 documents and turned them over in sealed packages; further review found duplications and overlap and reduced the documents down to 96.
Federal courts found Husky Energy had grounds to claim either litigation privilege or solicitor-client privilege on 93 of those documents.
The 93 documents were classified into four categories according to the decision: investigation records and charters guiding the investigation, miscellaneous records from the internal investigation and expert reports.