Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to LA FOIP, Chapter 4, Exemptions from the Right of Access. Updated 18 Oct 2023. 143 Proprietary means of, relating to or holding as property.515 Proprietary interest is the interest held by a property owner together with all appurtenant rights, such as a stockholder’s right to vote the shares.516 It signifies simply “interest as an owner” or “legal right or title”.517 Owner means someone who has the right to possess, use, and convey something; a person in whom one or more interests are vested.518 Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act subsection 18(1)(a) is similar to Saskatchewan’s but instead of proprietary interest or right of use, it uses the phrase “that belongs to the Government of Ontario or an institution”.519 In Ontario Order MO-1746, the phrase “belongs to” was found to mean “ownership” which makes it relevant for Saskatchewan’s subsection 17(1)(b) of LA FOIP. In Order MO-1746, the Adjudicator stated: The Assistant Commissioner has thus determined that the term “belongs to” refers to “ownership” by an institution, and that the concept of “ownership of information” requires more than the right to simply possess, use or dispose of information, or control access to the physical record in which the information is contained. For information to “belong to” an institution, the institution must have some proprietary interest in it either in a traditional intellectual property sense - such as copyright, trademark, patent or industrial design - or in the sense that the law would recognize a substantial interest in protecting the information from misappropriation by another party. Examples of the latter type of information may include trade secrets, business to business mailing lists (Order P636), customer or supplier lists, price lists, or other types of confidential business information. In each of these examples, there is an inherent monetary value in the information to the organization resulting from the expenditure of money or the application of skill and effort to develop the information. If, in addition, there is a quality of confidence about the information, in the sense that it is consistently treated in a confidential manner, and it derives its value to the organization from not being generally known, the courts will recognize a valid interest in protecting the confidential business 515 Garner, Bryan A., 2019. Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th Edition. St. Paul, Minn.: West Group at p. 1474. 516 Garner, Bryan A., 2019. Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th Edition. St. Paul, Minn.: West Group at p. 969. First relied on by SK OIPC in F-2005-006 at [11]. 517 Sangan’s Encyclopedia of Words and Phrases Legal Maxims, Canada, 5th Edition, Volume 4, P to R, at p. P-495. 518 Garner, Bryan A., 2019. Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th Edition. St. Paul, Minn.: West Group at p. 1331. 519 Ontario subsection 18(1)(a) of FOIP provides “A head may refuse to disclose a record that contains…trade secrets or financial, commercial, scientific or technical information that belongs to the Government of Ontario or an institution and has monetary value or potential monetary value”.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTgwMjYzOA==