The complainant alleged that Public Safety Canada (Public Safety) refused to process an access request for every record under its control and all associated metadata related to a series of keywords. Public Safety explained that portions of the request did not meet with certain requirements of the Access to Information Act and that processing any parts of the request would involve an expansive volume of records and all of its operations. The complaint is well founded yet the Commissioner agreed with Public Safety’s position that parts of the request did not satisfy the requirements of section 6. The Commissioner considered the effort required by an experienced employee to identify specific records as unreasonable and agreed that identifying portions of the records would take significant time and resources. Public Safety failed to meet its legislated obligations under the Act as it did not claim an extension of time and did not have the authority to refuse to process the request. The Deputy Minister of Public Safety Canada gave the Commissioner notice that he would process parts of the request and committed to processing 5,000 pages per year of the approximate 645 000 pages identified as relevant to the request.

Institution
Public Safety Canada
Section of the Act
4(2.1)
6
9(1)
10(3)
30(1)(f)
Decision Type
Recommendation
Final report
Date modified:
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