The complainant alleged that the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada (TBS) had improperly withheld information under subsection 19(1)(personal information) and paragraphs 18(b) (negotiations by government institutions), 21(1)(a) (advice or recommendations), 21(1)(c) (positions or plans developed for negotiations) and 21(1)(d) (plans related to personnel management or administration) of the Access to Information Act in response to an access request for records pertaining to increased use of sick leave prior to retirement.

Over the course of the investigation, the complainant decided it was no longer necessary for the Office of Information Commissioner to investigate subsection 19(1) and reduced the scope of the complaint to pages 2, 3, 4 and 12 of TBS’s response.

TBS could not show that it met all the requirements for the remainder of these exemptions since the information on the pages at issue was of a statistical and dated nature. TBS failed to demonstrate how the information at hand could reasonably lead to interference with negotiations or represent a “take away” to bargaining agents regarding future plans for personnel management or administration.

The Information Commissioner recommended that TBS disclose in full, all pages at issue. TBS gave notice that it would not be implementing the recommendations.

Even if sick leave has been proven to be a sensitive issue, the Information Commissioner urged TBS’s President to reconsider its position, and to right the historical wrong that occurred during the processing of this access request; if not on the basis of the law, in the name of transparency.

The complaint is well founded.