Condo Living

October 8, 2026 Published by Golden Horseshoe Chapter - By Tim Bolivar

What Does “Confidential” Really Mean in Condominium Minutes?

From the Volume 29, Fall 2026 issue of the CCI GHC Condo News Magazine

As General Manager of Minutes On-Time, I work with condominium boards and managers across Ontario in preparing their meeting minutes. One issue that regularly creates confusion is what it actually means when part of those minutes is labelled “confidential.”

Ontario condominium boards routinely discuss information that should not necessarily be shared with everyone. Unit-specific matters, legal issues, employee matters and other sensitive subjects can all arise during an ordinary board meeting.

For many years, a common practice has been to separate these matters into a confidential section or set of minutes. The general minutes identify the topic, while the substantive details are recorded separately.

There are good practical reasons for doing this. It keeps sensitive information from being unnecessarily circulated and makes it easier to identify portions of the record that may require special treatment.

However, there is an important distinction between organizing information as confidential and determining whether that information can legally be withheld.

Simply calling minutes “confidential” does not make everything in them confidential.

There Is Still Only One Board Meeting

It is common to hear that a board has gone “in camera” or moved into a “confidential meeting.” These terms are useful in practice, but they can create the impression that the board has moved into a legally distinct type of meeting whose records are automatically unavailable to owners.

The Condominium Act, 1998 does not establish a separate category of confidential or in-camera board meeting. The board is still conducting a board meeting. During that meeting, however, it may discuss information that a particular person is not entitled to receive.

The Condominium Authority Tribunal (CAT) has addressed this distinction in several decisions, including Robinson v. Durham Condominium Corporation No. 139, Russell v. York Condominium Corporation No. 50 and Zamfir v. York Condominium Corporation No. 238.

These decisions challenged the practice of treating an entire set of “in-camera” minutes as automatically exempt from disclosure simply because of its designation.

In Zamfir, the CAT explained that “in-camera” minutes should essentially be understood as the record of portions of a board meeting that may take place confidentially and/or may require redaction.

The word may is important.

The fact that information appears in confidential minutes does not, on its own, determine whether it can be withheld from someone requesting the corporation’s records.

Why the CAT’s Approach Matters

Ontario condominium corporations are required to maintain minutes of board meetings, and owners have significant rights to examine and obtain copies of corporate records.

Those rights are not unlimited. The Condominium Act contains exceptions relating to certain information, including matters involving employees, actual or contemplated litigation, and specific units or owners. Other protections, such as solicitor-client privilege, can also apply.

The CAT’s concern has been with treating confidentiality as an all-or-nothing designation.

In Russell, for example, the Tribunal addressed minutes where the substance of meetings had been subject to block redactions. The decision emphasized that when information is redacted, there must be a reason for doing so based on an applicable exemption.

The Condominium Authority of Ontario provides similar practical guidance. It advises boards to maintain good minutes and be prepared to share them when responding to a records request, while recognizing that portions may be redacted where they contain information the requester is not entitled to receive.

The result is a more nuanced approach to confidentiality than simply dividing a corporation’s records into “public” and “confidential.”

Confidential From Whom?

A more useful question is often: confidential from whom?

Consider a discussion involving a particular unit. Information about that unit may not be appropriate for circulation to owners generally, while the owner of that unit may have different access rights.

The same principle can apply in less obvious situations. A board might review competing vendor quotations and record pricing details in its minutes. Those details might appropriately be available to owners while still being inappropriate to post publicly where competing vendors could see one another’s pricing.

In other words, confidentiality can depend not only on what the information is, but also on who is receiving it and why.

This is why “general” and “confidential” minutes are best understood as useful organizational categories rather than absolute access classifications.

Separate Confidential Minutes Can Still Be Useful

None of this means that corporations need to abandon separate confidential minutes.

From a practical records-management perspective, separating sensitive discussions can be helpful. It keeps unit-specific, legal and other sensitive information out of the minutes that are routinely circulated and makes potentially restricted information easier to identify later.

The important point is that separation should not end the analysis.

When responding to a records request, a corporation still needs to consider what information is contained in the confidential record and whether the particular requester is entitled to receive it. The heading at the top of the document cannot make that determination.

The general minutes should also retain an appropriate record that the matter was considered. If a sensitive issue disappears from them entirely, the remaining minutes can give an incomplete picture of the business conducted by the board. Identifying the general subject and referring to the confidential minutes, without revealing the sensitive details, can preserve that continuity.

A Better Way to Think About Confidentiality

The distinction between general and confidential minutes remains useful. Boards deal with genuinely sensitive information, and separating that information can make the corporation’s records clearer and easier to manage.

The CAT’s decisions do not eliminate that practical distinction. Rather, they remind corporations that confidentiality ultimately attaches to information, not to the title placed on a document.

Good minutes should accurately record the business conducted by the board while allowing sensitive information to be identified and handled appropriately. When disclosure is later considered, the corporation can then determine what the requester is entitled to receive and what, if anything, should be redacted.

That approach preserves both sides of the equation: a complete governance record for the corporation and appropriate protection for information that should not be disclosed.

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Tim Bolivar is the General Manager of Minutes On-Time, a professional minute-taking service working with condominium corporations and property management companies across Canada. He has worked in the condominium industry for more than 15 years, including experience in condominium management, and has served as Secretary on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Chapter of the Community Associations Institute (CAI Canada).