Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. A Guide to Submissions. Effective Sept. 2020. Updated Dec. 2022. 7 Prior to the public body/trustee preparing its submission, it is important that the public body/trustee has already prepared the Index of Records. This provides the public body/trustee an opportunity to review the record and make decisions as to whether further records can be released to the applicant. If further records are released, that narrows the scope of the issue in dispute and allows the public body/trustee to focus its submission on only the outstanding issues. It is good practice if the Index of Records is provided with the record to my office as a separate document or attachment and the public body/trustee refers to the sequential page number and/or sequential severance number in its submission as is referred to in the Index of Records. Preparing the Submission Preliminaries Determine your Audience Speakers or presenters, when talking about being persuasive, will always suggest that the first step is to identify your audience. In this case, a submission is being sent to the Commissioner’s office. That is your audience. When you want to be persuasive in your arguments to the Commissioner’s office, understanding the role of the Commissioner is important in tailoring your arguments. The Commissioner’s office is a neutral oversight body. The Commissioner is appointed by the Legislative Assembly and receives the mandate set out in FOIP, LA FOIP, and HIPA. The Commissioner’s office, under the legislation, is required to review the facts, the record, the arguments from all parties and then to issue a report with findings and recommendations. The Commissioner’s office has found that when dealing with other organizations, a cooperative approach really works. The Commissioner’s office is not on the side of the applicant, third party or the public body/trustee. The Commissioner reviews the situation and makes findings and recommendations. If an applicant or third party is not satisfied with the outcome of a review, they can appeal to the Court of King’s Bench. Remember, the Commissioner’s office will also be receiving arguments from the opposing parties in the case and, how persuasive a party’s arguments are will influence the outcome of the case and you want yours to be most persuasive. Stating that our tests/criteria or factors as laid out in the Guides are wrong or FOIP, LA FOIP or
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