Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to LA FOIP, Chapter 4, Exemptions from the Right of Access. Updated 18 Oct 2023. 17 Subsection 13(1)(a) of LA FOIP is a mandatory class-based exemption. It permits refusal of access to information in a record where the information was obtained in confidence, implicitly or explicitly from the Government of Canada unless there is consent to release or the information was made public. It includes the Government of Canada’s agencies, Crown corporations and other institutions. The following three-part test can be applied: 1. Was the information obtained from the Government of Canada or its agencies, Crown corporations or other institutions? For this exemption to apply, the agencies in question must qualify as either “Government of Canada or its agencies, Crown corporations or other institutions”. Because of the possessive pronoun in this clause, “agencies” and “other institutions” should be understood as federal agencies and federal institutions. For “other institutions”, it should be either federal government institutions as defined by the federal Access to Information Act or institutions controlled by the federal government.31 For some assistance, Schedule 1 (Section 3) of the federal Access to Information Act provides a list of federal government institutions. Obtained means to acquire in any way; to get possession of; to procure; or to get a hold of by effort.32 A local authority could obtain information either intentionally or unintentionally. It can also include information that was received indirectly provided its original source was the Government of Canada. However, to obtain information suggests that the local authority did not create it. Regardless, the provision is not so much driven by the source of the record to which access is sought as it is by the confidential nature and source of the information it contains. As such, authorship (or who created the record) is irrelevant.33 Section 13 of LA FOIP uses the term “information contained in a record” rather than “a record” like other exemptions in LA FOIP. Therefore, the exemption can apply to information contained within a record that was authored by the local authority provided the information at issue was obtained from the Government of Canada. 31 SK OIPC Review Report F-2006-002 at [23] and [32]. 32 Originated from Campbell Black, Henry, 1990. Black’s Law Dictionary, 6th Edition. St. Paul, Minn.: West Group. Adopted by AB IPC in Order 2000-021 at [26]. Adopted in SK OIPC Review Report F-2006-001 at [58] and [59]. Also, found in SK OIPC Review Report F-2006-002 at [39]. 33 Saskatchewan (Ministry of Health) v West, 2022 SKCA 18 at [46] and [47].
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