The complainant alleged that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) had improperly withheld information under subsection 24(1) (disclosure restricted by another law), paragraph 16(1)(c) (conduct of investigations) and subsection 19(1) (personal information) of the Access to Information Act in response to an access request for the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) database for all recipient corporations.

In the present instance, the schedule II provision claimed by CRA is section 241 of the Income Tax Act. Section 241 contains a general prohibition of the disclosure of taxpayer information, subject to certain limited exceptions.

The Office of the Information Commissioner is satisfied that the information at issue is about identifiable taxpayers that was prepared from information obtained by CRA for the purposes of administering the Income Tax Act, and the Commissioner concluded that the information was properly withheld pursuant to subsection 24(1).

Since paragraph 16(1)(c) and subsection 19(1) of the Act were applied concurrently to the same information that was exempted pursuant to subsection 24(1), it was not necessary to determine whether refusal to disclose the same information could also be justified under paragraph 16(1)(c) and subsection 19(1).

The complaint is not well founded.