The City of Coquitlam was ordered to disclose how much it spent on lawyers for a concluded gas-pipeline appeal after a British Columbia information adjudicator found that releasing a single total would not expose confidential legal advice.
In City of Coquitlam, Order F26-78, 2026 BCIPC 97, issued September 2, 2026, adjudicator David S. Adams required the city to create a record showing the aggregate fee amount and give it to the requester. The ruling did not require release of the detailed legal invoices themselves.
A request for the bottom line
The dispute grew out of the city’s appeal of two B.C. Utilities Commission orders involving FortisBC’s abandonment of a decommissioned gas pipeline. The B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed that appeal in September 2021.
The requester, a former utilities commissioner involved in one of the underlying decisions, later sought the city’s total expenses for the appeal. Coquitlam identified 25 legal invoices spanning 109 pages, but withheld the requested information under the solicitor-client privilege exception in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
The requester clarified that he did not want the invoices. He wanted only the overall legal cost, and asked for a new record if the city did not already have one showing that amount.
Adams found that creating it was part of the city’s statutory duty. Section 6(2) requires a public body to create a record from machine-readable information using its normal technology and expertise when doing so would not unreasonably interfere with its operations. Coquitlam did not dispute its ability to produce the total, which the adjudicator described as a simple calculation from the invoices.
Privilege starts with a presumption
The ruling did not treat lawyers’ bills as automatically public. Adams accepted that information about legal fees is presumptively privileged because it can reveal protected communications between a lawyer and client.
That presumption can be overcome, however, where disclosure creates no reasonable possibility of directly or indirectly revealing confidential legal advice. The analysis depends on context, including the stage of the litigation, how detailed the billing information is and what a knowledgeable observer could infer.
Coquitlam argued that releasing the total could reveal how forcefully it was prepared to contest infrastructure decisions and provide an advantage to utilities. It also pointed to the requester’s experience and knowledge of the underlying proceedings.
Adams was not persuaded. The appeal had ended in a final judgment, rather than a settlement, and the city’s arguments were already public. The amount ultimately spent would reflect the variability and unpredictability of litigation. The city had not explained how the requester’s industry expertise would let him reconstruct privileged instructions or advice from the total.
The adjudicator also considered the possibility that other well-informed members of the public could see the information. He found the single lump sum, without dates, descriptions of services or other context, too uninformative to reveal protected communications.
Creation and disclosure ordered
Adams concluded that the presumption had been rebutted in these circumstances. He ordered Coquitlam to create the total-fee record, provide access and give the commissioner’s office evidence of compliance. The order set October 19, 2026 as the compliance deadline.
The reasons do not state the total legal bill. The decision concerns access to that aggregate figure, not the merits of the earlier pipeline appeal or a general right to inspect a municipality’s confidential legal invoices.
