The complainant alleged that Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) had improperly withheld information under paragraph 16(1)(c) (conduct of investigations), subsection 19(1) (personal information), paragraph 20(1)(b) (confidential third-party financial, commercial, scientific or technical information), paragraph 20(1)(c) (financial impact on a third party) and paragraph 21(1)(b) (accounts of consultations or deliberations) of the Access to Information Act. This was in response to an access request for rail industry workplace fatality investigation reports completed by ESDC between 2000 and 2020. The complaint falls within paragraph 30(1)(a) of the Act.

The Information Commissioner found that a significant amount of the withheld information met the requirements of subsection 19(1), as it was information about the victims, witnesses and other individuals involved, but found that certain information was not about identifiable individuals or was about individuals who had been deceased for more than 20 years.

The Office of the Information Commissioner sought representations from three third parties. With respect to the third-party information, neither ESDC nor the third parties provided sufficient representations to support that most of the withheld third-party information met the requirements of paragraph 20(1)(b) or that any of the information met the requirements of paragraph 20(1)(c).

The complaint is well founded.

The Information Commissioner ordered ESDC to disclose information it had not shown to meet the requirements of the exemptions, consider whether its discretion was triggered where it had not yet done so, and re-exercise its discretion where it had not demonstrated that discretion was reasonably exercised.

ESDC gave notice that it would implement the order.