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The Ministry of Financial Institutions (now the Ministry of Finance) (the Ministry) received a request under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act) for access to documents relating to an investigation undertaken by the Ministry into the actions of several named mortgage companies as a result of the requester's complaints. The investigation of these companies pertained to mortgage transactions involving the requester.
The Ministry provided partial access to a number of documents. However, access was denied in whole or in part to the remaining records at issue under sections 13, 17 and 21 of the Act. The requester appealed the Ministry's decision to deny access.
During mediation, the Ministry provided the appellant with two Indices, entitled General Records and Third Party Correspondence, identifying the records at issue, and disclosed some additional records. As the Indices refer numerically to general records and correspondence, respectively, I will insert the letters "G" before the former records, and "C" before the latter in my discussion. The appellant also indicated that he would not pursue access to some of the remaining records.
Further mediation was not successful and notice that an inquiry was being conducted to review the Ministry's decision was sent to the appellant, the Ministry and three affected persons. Representations were received from the Ministry and one of the affected persons only. The appellant's spouse submitted written consent to the disclosure to the appellant of any of her personal information which might be contained in the records.
In its representations, the Ministry stated that it was no longer claiming the exemption under section 13 of the Act for record G18 and removed its objections to the disclosure of the first page of record G4 and to Records C9 to C20 under the exemption provided by section 17(1) of the Act.
The records remaining at issue in this appeal consist of internal Ministry documents, as well as correspondence, which are described in the Appendix to this order. The record originally identified by the Ministry as G20 is identical to the fifth page of Record G17, and will be included in my discussion of Record G17. The general records at issue are portions of Records G4, G7, G8, G10, G15, G17, as well as G18 and G19 in their entirety. The third party correspondence records at issue are Record C1, and portions of Records C12 and C19.
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