Long-Haul Interswitching (LHI) - How to Request Confidentiality

Instructions

If you are a shipper applying for LHI and we accept your application, we will put the application and all supporting documents you send us on the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) public record. This means the information will be available to the public on request, or could be made public as part of an LHI order.

If your application or any supporting document includes information that you think would cause specific direct harm if made public, you can ask the CTA to treat that information as confidential. To do this, you must:

1. Send us two copies of the document, as follows.
   • One copy (the public version) from which the confidential information has been blacked out.
   • One copy (the confidential version) in which:
   • each page is marked "CONTAINS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION" at the top, and
   • you highlight or otherwise identify on each page the confidential information that was blacked out in the first copy.
2. Attach information about your request, including:
   • how the document is relevant to your LHI application;
   • why disclosing the information in it would be harmful to you, your company, or a third party (you must describe a specific, direct harm);
   • a list of any documents you have that support your request/claim of specific direct harm, if any (you should email these with your confidentiality request);
   • the names of anyone participating in the LHI adjudication that you are willing to share the information with, if any (for example, the Local Carrier). If you are asking us to withhold the information from the public and the Local Carrier, make this clear.

Important Notes

Required documents must be provided

• You must provide all documents that are a required part of your LHI case even if they contain confidential information.

How your request is assessed

• One or more Agency Members will consider your request. Members do not automatically approve requests for confidentiality. They assess them on a case-by-case basis, and will only agree to treat information as confidential if:
  • it is relevant to your LHI application,
  • you can show that releasing the information would cause specific direct harm, and
  • you can show that the harm outweighs any benefit to disclosing the information.

Possible outcomes

• If Members decide that the document is not relevant to your application, they will return it to you. It will not be placed on the public record.
• If the document is relevant, but Members decide that disclosing it is not likely to result in specific direct harm, or that benefits to disclosing it outweigh the harm, they could place your document on the public record or require you to share it with the Local Carrier.
• If the document is relevant and Members decide that disclosing it is likely to cause specific direct harm, there are several possible outcomes.
  • They may decide to keep the document confidential. Only the Canadian Transportation Agency would have it.
  • They may decide that you should give the document or part of it in confidence to another person involved in the LHI case, such as the Local Carrier or their Representative. First, that person would have to sign a binding promise, called an undertaking, to keep the document confidential.
  • They may decide that it is in the public interest to disclose the document, and put it on the public record. This would happen if they believed the public interest outweighed the specific direct harm.
  • They may decide to remove the confidential information from the document, and put the rest on the public record.