Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to FOIP, Chapter 1, Purposes and Scope of FOIP. Updated 7 March 2023 32 Social Services work with the IPC and the Ministry of Justice to amend FOIP by repealing subsection 23(3)(c) of FOIP. Section 4: Existing Rights Preserved Existing rights preserved 4 This Act: (a) complements and does not replace exiting procedures for access to government information or records; (b) does not in any way limit access to the type of government information or records that is normally available to the public; (c) does not limit the information otherwise available by law to a party to litigation; (d) does not affect the power of any court or tribunal to compel a witness to testify or to compel the production of documents; (e) does not prohibit the transfer, storage or destruction of any record in accordance with any other Act or any regulation; (f) does not prevent access to a registry operated by a government institution where access to the registry is normally allowed to the public. Section 4 of FOIP was considered by the Saskatchewan Court of King’s Bench in City Collection Co. v. Saskatchewan Government Insurance, 1993 CanLII 8956 (SK KB) and General Motors Acceptance Corp. of Canada v. Saskatchewan Government Insurance, 1993 CanLII 8794 (SK KB). In the latter decision, Malone, J. determined that the clear intent of section 4 of FOIP was to ensure that information available to the public prior to FOIP would remain available after its coming into effect. In his judgement, he stated as follows: [8] In my opinion, s. 4 of the Act is determinative of the issue. The clear intent of this section is to provide that information available to the public prior to the passage of the Act shall remain available after its coming into effect. To interpret this section any other way would result in a restriction on the right of the public to obtain information which it previously had access to. This surely was not the intention of the Legislature. The provisions of the Act following s. 4 must be interpreted as applying to only information which is requested by the public which was not available to it prior to the passage of the Act. It is these provisions that attempt to balance the right of privacy of individuals with the desire of the public to obtain more information concerning the operation of
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