Is Privilege Waived When Cooperating With A Police Investigation?

As Justice Tyndale once stated in a decision rendered by the Quebec Court of Appeal (QCA), "It is common sense that a secret once revealed is a secret no longer." This adage has since been widely used in support of the principle according to which the disclosure of privileged information to a third party, who may in turn freely disclose such information, usually entails a waiver of such attorney-client privilege (professional secrecy) against any other third party. However, this principle has been modulated over time to take into account the context surrounding each case, regardless of whether the privileged information is disclosed implicitly or explicitly.

As a recent example, in Centre universitaire de santé McGill c. Lemay, the QCA further modulated the general principle according to which the disclosure of privileged information to a third party necessarily entails the waiver of attorney-client privilege with respect to third parties, this time in the