Decisions

The complainant alleged that Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) had improperly withheld information under paragraph 16(1)(c) (conduct of investigations), subsection 19(1) (personal information), paragraph 20(1)(b) (confidential third-party financial, commercial, scientific or technical information), paragraph 20(1)(c) (financial impact on a third party) and paragraph 21(1)(b) (accounts of consultations or deliberations) of the Access to Information Act. This was in response to an access request for rail industry workplace fatality investigation reports completed by ESDC between 2000 and 2020. The complaint falls within paragraph 30(1)(a) of the Act.

The Information Commissioner found that a significant amount of the withheld information met the requirements of subsection 19(1), as it was information about the victims, witnesses and other individuals involved, but found that certain information was not about identifiable individuals or was about individuals who had been deceased for more than 20 years.

The Office of the Information Commissioner sought representations from three third parties. With respect to the third-party information, neither ESDC nor the third parties provided sufficient representations to support that most of the withheld third-party information met the requirements of paragraph 20(1)(b) or that any of the information met the requirements of paragraph 20(1)(c).

The complaint is well founded.

The Information Commissioner ordered ESDC to disclose information it had not shown to meet the requirements of the exemptions, consider whether its discretion was triggered where it had not yet done so, and re-exercise its discretion where it had not demonstrated that discretion was reasonably exercised.

ESDC gave notice that it would implement the order.

The complainant alleged that the National Capital Commission (NCC) had improperly withheld information under paragraph 16(2)(c) (facilitating the commission of an offence), subsection 18(d) (negotiations by government institutions) and subsection 19(1) (personal information) of the Access to Information Act in response to an access request for records discussing specific renovation projects at Rideau Hall. The complaint falls within paragraph 30(1)(a) of the Act.

The application of paragraph 16(2)(c) and subsection 18(d) to withhold the records at issue was removed from the scope of the complaint.

During the investigation, the NCC decided to disclose information on four pages that it had withheld under subsection 19(1).

For the remaining information, the NCC could not show that the name, title and contact information of an NCC employee met all the requirements of subsection 19(1). In addition, the NCC did not reasonably exercise its discretion to decide whether to disclose publicly available personal information.

The Information Commissioner ordered the NCC to disclose the information at issue and to exercise its discretion to disclose publicly available personal information.

The NCC gave notice to the Commissioner that it would implement the order.

The complaint is well founded.