The complainant alleges that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) did not conduct a reasonable search in response to an access request under the Access to Information Act. This was in response to a request for emails, text messages and briefing notes related to CBSA’s list of companies that worked on the ArriveCAN application. 

The complainant questioned the fact that they received no text messages in response to their request. The Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) sought information from CBSA related to the program areas tasked to search for records, the parameters of the search and its policies related to the management of text messages. The Offices of Primary Interest most likely to have records relevant to the access request under their control, searched for records in the appropriate repositories and provided these records to the Access to Information and Privacy unit for review. It is reasonable to believe that text messages did not exist at the time the present request was made and/or were not caught as relevant.

The Information Commissioner concluded that CBSA conducted a reasonable search for records. The complaint is not well founded.