Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. A Guide to Submissions. Effective Sept. 2020. Updated Dec. 2022. 23 Gather Your Evidence As a third party, you will have arguments under section 19 of FOIP (section 18 of LA FOIP, section 38 of HIPA), but your case will be assisted by providing some backup in terms of other evidence, letters, emails, and memos supporting your arguments. If negotiations are going on, provide the documents that show that negotiations are going on. If you expect negotiations in the future, provide some documents that support that you will be negotiating in 3 months, 6 months, or one year. Speculation that negotiations might be going on will not be sufficient. If you are arguing that the records are confidential, provide some documents supporting your claim that the communication was confidential. You can refer to a clause in a contract, a paragraph in an email or a memo to the file indicating future conversations will be confidential. If historically similar communications in the past were confidential, provide proof of that. Proving these things can either be shown by providing records or an affidavit of an employee of the third party. Third parties should be aware that providing these examples does not mean the Commissioner will always find the communications were confidential, but it will increase the chances he will. All factors pertinent and unique to each case are considered. Refer to the Guide to FOIP, Guide to LA FOIP, or Guide to HIPA The Commissioner’s office has developed the Guide to FOIP (for government institutions), Guide to LA FOIP (for local authorities), and Guide to HIPA (for trustees). Before beginning to write a submission, a third party should read about section 19 of FOIP (section 18 of LA FOIP, section 38 of HIPA). This will give the third party an idea of what the Commissioner’s office will be looking for when the submission is reviewed. One does not have to agree with the tests discussed but needs to know as a starting point what the Commissioner’s office is expecting to receive representations on. Marshall Your Arguments After considering the points above, the third party should determine what its strongest arguments are for objecting to the release of the records pursuant to section 19 of FOIP (section18 of LA FOIP, section 38 of HIPA). There is no need to present arguments on other exemptions in FOIP or LA FOIP except an argument on not releasing personal information under section 29 of FOIP (section 28 of LA FOIP). As noted earlier, only the head of the public body can invoke other exemptions.
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