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LES CÈDRES · GOLD CARD FIELD GUIDE

Can an employer confidentiality label replace the evidence requested for Gold Card?

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THE DIRECT ANSWER

No assumption of sufficiency follows from the label. Identify what the official request needs and seek appropriate access, evidence or clarification through the actual process.

Address the question without inventing authority

This page does not authorize an improper disclosure. Coordinate with the authorized holder rather than claiming records were provided, approved for release or unnecessary without support. Ask three questions in order.

Who owns the record, whether the applicant, the employer, or a third party such as a client. What restriction actually applies, whether a contractual confidentiality term, a client's own obligation, a statutory duty, or an internal policy someone with authority could waive. And what would satisfy the request without disclosing the restricted material at all.

Hypothetical example: an urban forestry consultancy tells an employee that project reports are confidential to the municipalities that commissioned them. Those reports may indeed be restricted, while the employee's own contract, position description and dated assignment letters are not, and those may address the point the request was testing. Where the restricted material genuinely is the only source, the answer is to say so through the applicable process, describe the attempts made, and offer the best available alternative evidence.

What is never appropriate is to describe a document as unavailable when nobody has asked for it, or to supply material the applicant has no right to release.

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