Section 25: Questions
Archived [2008-11] – Investigator's Guide to Interpreting the Act
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| Section – 25 |
| Statement of Test to be Met |
| Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, where a request is made to a government institution for access to a record that the head of the institution is authorized to refuse to disclose under this Act by reason of information or other material contained in the record, the head of the institution shall disclose any part of the record that does not contain, and can reasonably be severed from any part that contains, any such information or material |
| Relevant Questions | Departmental Response | Assessment |
| What is the volume of records involved? | ||
| How much time did the Department require to process the records? | ||
| What has the Department on record on the severance made ? | ||
| Is there in the information in issue information capable of standing independently without the result of meaningless words and phrases out of context or who would provide clues to the content of the exempted portions? | ||
| Would the remains be meaningful without the deleted passages and would not distort the sense of the original brief? | ||
| Would the effort required on the part of the Department would be reasonably proportionate to the quality of access it would provide? | ||
| Would the resulting document be meaningless or misleading to the requester as the information contains would be taken totally out of context? | ||
| Have the records been consistently severed? | ||
| Would the disclosure of the documents compromise the claim of other exemptions? |