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Document
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P-1407
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File #
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P_9700075
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Institution/HIC
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Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations
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Summary
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NATURE OF THE APPEAL: The appellant submitted a request to the Ministry of Consumer and CommercialRelations (the Ministry) for access to a copy of his father's marriagecertificate. The appellant's father died in 1961. In his request, theappellant stated that "... I have been advised by ... the Office of theRegistrar General that since one of the partners died over 30 years ago thisrequest will be met". The request was made under the Freedom ofInformation and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act ). The Ministry provided the appellant with partial access to the marriagecertificate. It withheld certain information pursuant to section 21(1) of the Act (invasion of privacy). The appellant filed an appeal of this decision. A Notice of Inquiry was sent to the appellant and the Ministry. ASupplementary Notice of Inquiry was subsequently sent to the parties to canvasstheir views on some additional issues. Representations were received from bothparties. THE RECORD The Ministry administers the Vital Statistics Act (the VSA )through the Office of the Registrar General (the ORG). Under the VSA ,there is a uniform system of registration for all births, marriages, deaths,still-births, adoptions and changes of name that occur in Ontario. As noted above, the appellant's request refers to a copy of his father's "marriagecertificate". The Ministry identified a document which, although entitled "MarriageCertificate", is, in fact, the registration of the marriage which is issued under section 45(2) of the VSA . In its submissions, the Ministry notes that officials with ORGdetermined that the appellant sought access to this document as it contains moreinformation than the marriage certificate per se. The marriage certificate is acertified extract of only some of the information contained in the marriageregistration, is governed by the provisions of section 44(3) of the VSA and is issued in Form 30, prescribed under the regulations to the VSA . Although I am satisfied that it is the registration of the marriage which isthe record at issue in this appeal, the following discussion will address someissues related to access to the certified extract as there appears to be someconfusion on both the part of the Ministry and the appellant concerning accessto each of these documents. DISCUSSION: PERSONAL INFORMATION Under section 2(1) of the Act , "personal information" isdefined, in part, to mean recorded information about an identifiable individual,including the individual's name where it appears with other information relatingto the individual. Section 2(2) of the Act provides that personal information does notinclude information about an individual who has been dead for more than thirtyyears. As the appellant provided the Ministry with a copy of his father's deathcertificate indicating that his father had died in 1961, the Ministry hasdisclosed the information of his father, the bridegroom. The Ministry has not disclosed the following information from theregistration of the marriage: the name, age, occupation, religious denomination,ability to read and write, and residence and birthplace of the bride; the namesand addresses of two witnesses; the religious denomination of the personsolemnizing the marriage; and the names of the bride's parents, as well as herfather's birthplace. The name and birthplace of the bride would appear in amarriage extract. The Ministry submits that, as the bride died in 1979, the informationcontained in the record constitutes her personal information. I agree. There is no indication on the face of the record, nor has any otherinformation been provided to me to indicate the probable ages of the witnesses,the bride's parents or the person who solemnized the marriage. In thesecircumstances, I adopt the approach of Inquiry Officer Mumtaz Jiwan as set outin Order P-1232, in order to determine if the information in the recordconstitutes the personal information of these individuals. In that order, shestates: In my view, given the records at issue and the particular circumstances ofthis appeal, it is permissible for me to make some assumptions, based on theevidence on the face of the records. These assumptions relate to the probableage of individuals and to the age beyond which a person would not reasonably beexpected to live. Because privacy protection is a fundamental principle in the Act , it is appropriate to be conservative in making assumptions thatwould lead to disclosure of anything that could be personal information. In that order, Inquiry Officer Jiwan considered a marriage record from 1923. In that case, had the bride been alive at the time of the order, she would havebeen 95 years old. In these circumstances, the Inquiry Officer felt that it wasreasonable to assume that the information about the bride's parents related toindividuals who would have been much older than 95 years of age at that time andwho would likely have been dead for more than 30 years. In the current appeal, the Ministry notes that, if she were still alive, thebride would be 88 years of age. It submits that, in this case, it is notappropriate to assume that her parents would have been dead for more than thirtyyears. The Ministry has, therefore, treated information about the bride'sparents as their personal information. In this case, based on a conservativeestimate, without evidence to the contrary, I am not prepared to find that thebride's parents have been dead for more than thirty years. Accordingly, Iaccept the Ministry's submissions that the information related to the bride'sparents constitutes their personal information. I have no evidence before me with respect to the possible ages of thewitnesses and the individual who officiated at the wedding. Any or all of theindividuals may be older or younger than the bride and groom. In the absence ofany evidence, I must err on the side of caution to protect the personal privacyof these identifiable individuals and find that the information related to thewitnesses and the individual solemnizing the marriage constitutes the personalinformation of these individuals. INVASION OF PRIVACY Once it has been determined that a record contains personal information,section 21(1) of the Act prohibits the disclosure of this informationunless one of the exceptions listed in the section applies. Three of theseexceptions, sections 21(1)(c), (d) and (f) may apply in the circumstances ofthis appeal. These exceptions state: A head shall refuse to disclose personal information to any person otherthan the individual to whom the information relates except, (c)personal information collected and maintained specifically for thepurpose of cre
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Legislation
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FIPPA
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21(1)(c)
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21(1)(d)
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21(1)(f)
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Subject Index
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Signed by
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Anita Fineberg
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Published
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Jun 20, 1997
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Type
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Order
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