The complainant alleged that the 29,200-day time extension claimed by Library and Archives Canada (LAC) to process a request made under the Access to Information Act is unreasonable.

The Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) received the complaint on May 2, 2018.

LAC identified 780,000 pages of paper and microfilm records responsive to the request for Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) records on Project Anecdote.

LAC did not meet the requirements of a time extension under paragraph 9(1)(a); therefore, its time extension was invalid. In the absence of a valid time extension, institutions are required to respond to an access request within 30 days, which LAC also failed to do. Therefore, LAC is deemed to have refused access to the requested records pursuant to subsection 10(3).

The complaint is well founded.