Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to FOIP, Chapter 3, Access to Records. Updated 5 May 2023. 12 FOIP, it is not required that the request be submitted on a prescribed form, provided it has all the required elements found on the prescribed form. RVCL recognized the applicant’s email requesting records as a request under LA FOIP when it advised the applicant it would be processed in that manner. Furthermore, if RVCL did not intend to process the emailed request as a request under LA FOIP, it should not have requested and accepted the applicant’s $20 application fee. SEARCH FOR RECORDS Subsection 5.1(1) of FOIP requires a government institution to respond to an applicant’s access to information request openly, accurately and completely. This means that government institutions should make reasonable effort to not only identify and seek out records responsive to an applicant’s access to information request, but to explain the steps in the process. The threshold that must be met is one of “reasonableness”. In other words, it is not a standard of perfection, but rather what a fair and rational person would expect to be done or consider acceptable.126F 17 A reasonable search is one in which an employee, experienced in the subject matter, expends a reasonable effort to locate records which are reasonably related to the request. A reasonable effort is the level of effort you would expect of any fair, sensible person searching areas where records are likely to be stored. What is reasonable depends on the request and related circumstances.127F 18 It is not reasonable for a government institution to rely on an employee’s opinion that no records exist when deciding not to search. A government institution should not rely on anyone’s memory as to whether records were created. It cannot know in advance of doing a search whether an individual will be right about whether records were created. All an individual can say, with any reasonable certainty, is whether he or she personally created any records. Otherwise, the individual is merely expressing an opinion as to the likelihood of whether anyone else created records. 17 SK OIPC Review Report F-2012-002 at [27]. 18 SK OIPC Review Reports F-2008-001 at [38] and F-2012-002 at [26].
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