Will this Jehovah's Witness Attorney Lie to the Supreme Court?

Somewhere in British Columbia, a sealed envelope sits in a filing cabinet. Inside is a document about a man who no longer wants to be a Jehovah's Witness — his name, gender, birth date, the date he was baptized, and a summary of what three elders decided about him the day he chose to walk away. He asked for a copy. Watch Tower said no. A Canadian privacy commissioner ordered Watch Tower to hand it over for review. Watch Tower said no. A British Columbia Supreme Court judge ordered the same thing. They still said no. The British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled unanimously — three judges, zero dissent — ordering Watch Tower to comply. They still said no.

Now the case is at the Supreme Court of Canada. And the lawyer Watch Tower is sending to argue it is the same lawyer who told the Supreme Court of Canada in 2017 that Jehovah's Witness committee records are essentially inconsequential — a minor religious matter, nothing the courts should touch. Seven years later, Watch Tower's position is that the same category of records is so profoundly sacred that a government privacy adjudicator cannot be permitted to view one even in camera, behind closed doors. Both arguments cannot simultaneously be true.

A Source Inside the Circuit

The reason I'm covering this case is an email from a viewer named Doug Grote. Doug is a Canadian ex-Jehovah's Witness who spent 40 years inside the organization. He served as an elder. He also knows David Gnam personally — Gnam was in Doug's circuit when Doug was still inside, and today Gnam is an elder in the congregation Doug's son attends. Gnam is also the attorney Watch Tower has placed on the counsel list for this Supreme Court appeal. When a 40-year insider with that kind of direct line to the lawyer arguing before the highest court in the country sends you an email, you read it carefully.

Watch Tower's Case, and Why It Doesn't Hold

Watch Tower would describe this matter as follows: two former members, years after choosing to leave the organization, filed nuisance privacy requests. They are attempting to weaponize secular law against a religious community that was not bothering them. The records at issue are sacred pastoral deliberations — private expressions of conscience between elders, prepared in prayer, sealed in envelopes, kept under lock and key. No congregation member is ever permitted to see them. The elders are bound by what Watch Tower calls ecclesiastical duty to protect them. Handing these records to a government adjudicator, even just to look at, would violate both the elders' sincere religious beliefs and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

If you squint, it almost sounds reasonable. Churches have clergy confidentiality. Many legal traditions protect what happens inside genuinely religious communications. Except the framing falls apart when you examine what the records actually contain and how they get used. It falls apart on the first page of Watch Tower's own affidavits.

The records at issue are not about current members. They are not about people in the middle of a crisis of faith. They are not confessional conversations about private sins. They are records of two men's decisions to disassociate — to formally quit. Both men chose to leave.

The Record That Outlives the Relationship

Watch Tower's own elder affidavits, filed as evidence in court, explain what the record is actually kept for. According to elder John Babalola's sworn affidavit, which the Court of Appeal quoted directly, the record is prepared with the expectation that it will stay confidential and be read by no one else — except:

potentially for a fellow elder who may eventually be appointed to view the information for a necessary religious purpose, most notably a future request for reinstatement.

Sit with that for a moment. You walk away from the organization. You tell the elders you do not want to be a Jehovah's Witness anymore. Three of them sit in a room and write down what they decided about you. They seal the document in an envelope. They lock it in a cabinet. And on their own sworn evidence, the only anticipated future use for that record is the day you come asking to be let back in.

That is not pastoral care. Pastoral care ended the day you left. That is a membership file that stays open after you close the account.

What Is Actually in the Record

Both elders — John Va from the Grand Forks congregation and Paul Sidu from the Coldstream congregation — filed sworn affidavits describing the records. They fought hard to keep the records themselves from the privacy commissioner, but they were required to describe what the records contained. According to the Court of Appeal's decision, each record includes the person's name, gender, birth date, baptism date, the date they disassociated, the method by which they did so, and a summary prepared by a committee of three elders — described as a summary of their "spiritual deliberations" about the individual.

Watch Tower wants the emphasis on the spiritual summary. But in a privacy law case, the basic identifying data is exactly what a former member is entitled to. Their name, their baptism date — that is their information. The organization is saying they cannot have it because it happens to be written on the same document as the elders' religious thoughts about them. It is like a bank telling you that you cannot see your own account balance because it is written on the same page as the banker's private notes about what they think of you.

Watch Tower is not merely protecting pastoral privilege. They are using the pastoral framing to retain personal data collected about former members after those members have formally left.

The Record That Didn't Exist on Monday

Gregory Westgard, the Coldstream plaintiff, filed his privacy request in 2020. When he did, the Coldstream congregation told him something specific. The Supreme Court of Canada's own case summary states that Westgard was initially informed by the Coldstream congregation that no personal information was held. No records. Nothing on file.

The congregation then revised its answer: there is a record, it does contain personal information, but it cannot be disclosed because it is a privileged religious communication.

A record that did not exist on Monday became a sacred record under lock and key by Friday. Watch Tower's counsel has never explained that shift on the record.

"I Am Not Confident the Description Is Accurate"

When privacy adjudicator Elizabeth Barker — Director of Adjudication at the British Columbia Privacy Commissioner's Office — was evaluating these records, she wrote something in her published decision worth quoting directly:

I am not confident that the respondent's description of the records is accurate.

That is not an adjudicator being harsh. That is a quasi-judicial Canadian official stating, under her signature, in a published decision, that she does not trust what the Jehovah's Witnesses are telling her about what is in the envelope. And that is the specific, stated reason she needed to actually see the record — because the organization's own summary was not reliable enough to build a ruling on.

The Canadian legal system has now formally recorded in writing that Watch Tower's description of its own internal documents cannot be taken at face value. That ruling is on the books. It sits as a line in a judicial decision that anyone in Canada can cite. Watch Tower made the adjudicator write it.

The Law Firm at Every Hearing

The law firm representing Watch Tower at every level of this case is an Ontario firm called W. Glen How and Associates — named after one of the most influential Watchtower lawyers of the 20th century. The current managing partner, David Gnam, is a long-time Watch Tower attorney who has been publicly described as a Jehovah's Witness elder. Gnam is listed on the counsel roster for this Supreme Court appeal, the same way he was listed in a previous landmark Watch Tower case at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2017.

That case was Highwood Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses v. Wall. Randy Wall had been disfellowshipped by a Highwood Congregation Judicial Committee in Calgary. He took his disfellowshipping to court, and the case reached the Supreme Court of Canada. Gnam was lead counsel for Watch Tower. Jayden McEwen — the same McEwen whose name appears throughout the current case — sat beside him as co-counsel. Gnam won that case in 2018. He won it unanimously. And the argument he made to secure that win is what becomes a problem at this new hearing.

What the Watch Tower Lawyer Told the Justices in 2017

In the 2017 oral argument in the Wall case, Gnam described what happens to a disfellowshipped Jehovah's Witness in the congregation. His goal was to convince the court that disfellowshipping is a purely internal religious matter with no real-world consequences — nothing justiciable, nothing the court should touch. He told the justices that a disfellowshipped person is not completely shunned, that they can attend meetings, that they can sit wherever they like, that they can sing the songs, and that in his words, normal family relations continue with the exception of spiritual fellowship.

A minor religious status change. The court ruled for Watch Tower. Justice Rowe wrote that issues of theology are not justiciable. The court would not review Watch Tower's internal discipline machinery.

One Law Firm, Two Irreconcilable Arguments

Fast-forward to 2024 and 2025 in British Columbia. Watch Tower is in court again, represented by the same firm with Gnam's name on the counsel list. The subject is the same category of committee record that Gnam spent the 2017 hearing describing as essentially inconsequential. Watch Tower's position in 2025 is that this record is so deeply religious, so profoundly sacred, that showing it to a government privacy adjudicator would violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Elder Paul Sidhu's affidavit describes the deliberations contained in it as:

an expression of the elders' individual and collective deeply held religious convictions and conscience.

Kevin Knaust, the affiant for the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Canada, invoked Proverbs 11:13 to describe disclosure of the record as a violation of sacred ecclesiastical duty.

Same organization. Same law firm. Same category of records.

In 2017: a minor religious matter. Sing the songs. Nothing significant enough for the courts to touch.

In 2025: so sacred the state cannot look at it even once, in camera, behind closed doors, to verify what is inside.

I am not calling anyone a liar. I am not assigning motive. I am placing two positions next to each other — both on the public record, both from the same law firm, both argued to the country's highest court, seven years apart — and asking a simple question: how do you hold both of those arguments in your head at the same time and not feel something snag?

How a Pastoral Note Becomes a Permanent File

Understanding the mechanics of this record system matters, because once you see the structure you cannot miss it.

Someone decides they do not want to be a Jehovah's Witness anymore. They tell an elder. The elder does not accept the resignation on the spot. A committee of three elders is convened — this process is documented in Watch Tower's own internal manual, known as the Shepherd the Flock of God book, an elders-only instruction guide that prescribes every step. The three elders meet, deliberate, and either accept the disassociation or determine the person should be disfellowshipped. These are technically different outcomes with slightly different procedural steps, but they produce the same social consequence.

Then they write it down. One of the three prepares a summary: name, gender, baptism date, date of the decision, method of departure, and what the elders call spiritual deliberations. That phrase is doing a lot of work in the legal filings. A spiritual deliberation is, in practice, a group of three laymen — none trained in counseling, none trained in law, none trained in pastoral theology at a seminary level — writing their interpretation of why the person in front of them is leaving the faith. It might be a paragraph, it might be a page. It will typically quote a scripture, characterize the person's state of mind using language drawn from Watch Tower publications, and include whatever the elders think is relevant about the person's conduct leading up to the decision. Watch Tower is telling the Supreme Court of Canada that this is equivalent to a priest's sealed confessional. Three volunteer laymen with no paid clergy status — Watch Tower does not have paid clergy — writing their interpretations of a departing member's inner life, and sealing the result in an envelope.

That envelope goes into a locked cabinet. No ordinary congregation member is ever permitted to see it. And then the record is kept — not for a year, not for a decade. On the elders' own sworn evidence, the anticipated future use is a future request for reinstatement. If you ever want to come back, this file comes out. Elders assigned to your reinstatement review read what a different group of elders decided about you years earlier — people you may never have met, elders long since dead or relocated, writing from scriptural interpretations that may not match those of the elders now considering your case.

The file follows you out the door. These are not pastoral care records. They are administrative controls over former members. You will see this pattern everywhere once you know to look for it: departing members asking for records are told no, former members who ask too many questions are reminded that reinstatement is at the congregation's discretion. The quiet governing principle is always that the organization keeps something on you, and you cannot verify what it says because you are not permitted to see it.

Eleven Organizations at the Supreme Court

If you pull up the docket for Supreme Court of Canada case file number 41816 — the Vavilov appeal — and scroll through recent filings, you find a cascade of motions for leave to intervene: eleven of them, filed in a compressed window in March of 2026.

The list: Attorney General of Canada; Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario; Canadian Civil Liberties Association; British Columbia Civil Liberties Association; British Columbia Humanist Association; David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights; Public Interest Litigation Institute; Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers; the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada together with the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities; Christian Legal Fellowship; and the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA Canada).

That is not a normal case. That is a landmark in the making.

The split is illuminating. On the pro-disclosure side: every major civil liberties organization in the country, plus the Attorney General of Canada and the Privacy Commissioner of the most populous province. On the pro-Watch Tower side: a coalition of religious legal advocacy groups lining up to protect religious organizations' ability to shield internal records from state scrutiny. Everyone in the Canadian legal community — civil society, government, and religious institutions alike — understands what is at stake. This is not a question about two envelopes and two filing cabinets. It is a question about whether every religious organization in Canada can maintain permanent sealed records on former members and successfully argue that no secular institution is permitted to verify what those records contain.

What the Court of Appeal Already Decided

The British Columbia Court of Appeal, writing unanimously through Justice Karen Horseman, gave Watch Tower a preview of the uphill fight ahead. She held that the British Columbia privacy statute — the Personal Information Protection Act — does not itself infringe religious freedom. Properly interpreted, the statute already allows an adjudicator to balance religious rights against access rights, case by case. Watch Tower cannot argue at the Supreme Court that the statute is unconstitutional on its face. They can only argue that the specific order to produce the record was unreasonable — and the Court of Appeal already held that it was not.

The runway for this appeal got very narrow, very fast. Three consecutive Canadian tribunals have examined Watch Tower's argument that handing a record to a privacy commissioner would violate the Charter, and three consecutive Canadian tribunals have said no.

The Same Lever, a Different Country

This fight is not limited to British Columbia. Earlier this year, a Watch Tower elder in Mexico — a man named Alfred, whom I covered previously — used Mexico's federal data protection law, combined with Watch Tower's own internal Shepherd the Flock of God manual, to block a judicial committee from proceeding against him. A serving elder, acting against his own circuit. Alfred stopped the process before the record was even written.

If Mexico is the moment the data protection argument is used defensively — by a current member, before the file is created — British Columbia is the moment it is used offensively: by former members, reaching back into the filing cabinet years after the fact. Two ends of the same lever, the same global organization, the same structural vulnerability.

Corporate Records Management With a Liturgical Coat of Paint

I spent 40 years inside this organization. I know the language, the culture, how decisions like this get framed and how the paperwork gets filed away when the deliberations are done. When I look at what is in that sealed envelope, I know what it is.

It is a membership file. A file that records an administrative decision and preserves institutional leverage over the person it describes. The religious framing — the sincere spiritual deliberations, the scriptural duty, the conscience of the elders — is real in the sense that the men who write these records experience their task as spiritually weighted. I do not doubt that. But a feeling of spiritual weight does not change what the document is: a record that preserves identifying information about a former member, kept for use in future administrative decisions, that the former member is never allowed to see. That is not pastoral care. That is corporate records management with a liturgical coat of paint.

If an organization keeps records on you after you leave — records you are not allowed to see, records they will not disclose when a neutral reviewer asks to examine them — the organization does not trust what is in the records either. Trust means daylight. Secrecy means leverage.

Canadian privacy law, and similar laws in every jurisdiction with a robust data protection statute, is slowly becoming the tool that pries these records loose. Not through theology. Not through lawsuits over disfellowshipping decisions. Through a straightforward administrative principle: the information you collected about me after I told you I was done is mine, not yours. Watch Tower is discovering, case by case, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, that this principle does not have a religious exemption.