The complainant alleged that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) improperly withheld information under paragraph 21(1)(a) (advice or recommendations) of the Access to Information Act in response to an access request for records consisting of Fee Analysis Reports and fee monitoring dashboards that include cost recovery information for various immigration application programs from 2013-2019.

During the investigation, IRCC invoked section 23 (legal advice and litigation privilege) in addition to paragraph 21(1)(a) to the entire records.

IRCC could not show that it met all the requirements of these exemptions, in particular the information being withheld does not provide any advice or recommendations to IRCC’s senior management on decisions to be made. Overall, these reports appear to be purely factual and devoid of any specific advice.

The Commissioner sent an initial report to the Minister of IRCC, setting out the intended order to release the records in their entirety. The Minister informed the Commissioner that the information was released; therefore, the intended order became pointless and was not issued.

The complaint is well founded.