The Implied Undertaking Does Not Preclude Production Of Records Provided To A Regulator

In a previous post (available here) on The Resource, BLG commented on Imperial Oil v Jacques, in which the Supreme Court of Canada ordered the production of wiretap evidence gathered as part of a Competition Bureau investigation. Recently, in Floate v Gas Plus Inc, 2015 ABQB 545 ("Floate")  (full-text here) the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench ordered the production of documents provided to Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development ("ESRD") during a regulatory investigation in parallel litigation related to a release of hydrocarbons from a gas station. At issue in Floate was whether an implied undertaking applied to shield production of documents gathered during a regulatory investigation; the Court of Queen's Bench ruled that it did not, and ordered production of the documents at issue.