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Document
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P-741
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File #
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P_9400202
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Institution/HIC
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Ministry of Natural Resources
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Summary
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NATURE OF THE APPEAL: This is an appeal under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act ). The Ministry of Natural Resources (the Ministry) received a request for access to information regarding lands covered by specified Crown timber licences. The Ministry granted partial access to the responsive records and provided a fee estimate of $1,755 to the appellant. The appellant then made an application for a fee waiver which the Ministry denied. The appellant appealed the amount of the fee estimate and the decision of the Ministry to deny waiver of the fees. A Notice of Inquiry was provided to the Ministry and the appellant. Representations were received from both parties to the appeal. In its representations, the appellant claims that it is a "closely held small family corporation" and that the request was for information relating to the family's personal assets and, therefore, no fees are chargeable under section 57(2) of the Act . I will address this issue as a preliminary matter. PRELIMINARY MATTER: PERSONAL INFORMATION Section 57(2) of the Act states: Despite subsection (1), a head shall not require an individual to pay a fee for access to his or her own personal information . [emphasis added] Under section 2(1) of the Act , "personal information" is defined to mean recorded information about an identifiable individual. I thus have to determine whether the appellant is an "identifiable individual". The appellant, a named corporation, submits that it is a "closely held small family corporation". The appellant further submits that the request is for information relating to the family's personal assets and, therefore, the family should not be prejudiced under section 57(2) simply because it has chosen to hold its assets through a corporation rather than as individuals. Previous orders have determined that information which outwardly relates to a business entity can also be categorized as relating to an "identifiable individual" and, consequently, qualify as personal information for the purposes of the Act (Orders 113, P-364, P-515, M-277 and P-705). In my view, however, it is clear from the use of the term "individual" in section 57(2) of the Act that the exception to paying a fee for access to personal information only applies to natural persons. Had the Legislature intended that section 57(2) apply to exempt an entity such as a corporation from paying a fee for access, it could have and would have used the appropriate language to make this clear. In addition, the language of section 57(2) requires that the "personal information" relate to the individual who is requesting the information. In my view, a corporation cannot be considered an "identifiable individual" for the purpose of the definition of "personal information" in section 2(1) of the Act . In my view, the appellant in this appeal is a corporation. Section 57(2) cannot exempt a corporation from the requirement of a fee payment for access to information. Accordingly, I find that section 57(2) has no application in the circumstances of this appeal. DISCUSSION: FEE ESTIMATE I will now consider whether the amount of the estimated fee was calculated in accordance with section 57(1) of the Act which reads: Where no provision is made for a charge or fee under any other Act, a head shall require the person who makes a request for access to a record to pay, (a) a search charge for every hour of manual search required in excess of two hours to locate a record; (b) the costs of preparing the record for disclosure; (c) computer and other costs incurred in locating, retrieving, processing and copying a record; and (d) shipping costs. Section 6 of Regulation 460 made under the Act states, in part: The following are the fees that shall be charged for the purposes of subsection 57(1) of the Act : 1. For photocopies and computer printouts, 20 cents per page. ... 3. For manually searching for a record after two hours have been spent searching, $7.50 for each fifteen minutes spent by any person. 4. For preparing a record for disclosure, including severing a part of a record, $7.50 for each fifteen minutes spent by any person. ... 6. For any costs, including computer costs, incurred by the institution in locating, retrieving, processing and copying the record if those costs are specified in an invoice received by the institution. In its representations, the Ministry provided the following breakdown of the fee estimate: Search Costs Beyond the Initial 2 Hours: .. $1,440 ([50 hours of search time - 2 hours] @ $30/hour) Reproduction Costs: .. $ 50 Severance of Records: .. $ 240 (8 hours @ $30/hour) Shipping Costs: .. $ 25 The Ministry indicated that the request required searches in six different locations and that 1,659 pages of responsive records were located. The Ministry provided sworn affidavits from the three Ministry employees who conducted the searches. The affidavits indicate the specific dates and the time spent in reviewing files for the various searches. The Ministry states it made 261 severances to the records and that it took approximately 8 hours to prepare the records for disclosure for a total cost of $240. In addition, 261 pages, including copies of licences, were photocopied at a cost of $0.20 each for a total of $50. One of the affidavits indicates that some of the records were received from Management Board Secretariat and Legal Services and the fee estimate includes shipping costs estimated at $25. Another affidavit indicates that the fee estimate includes 6 hours spent on preparing an index for the purposes of responding to the request. In reviewing the Ministry's fee estimate, my responsibility under section 57(5) of the Act is to ensure that the amount estimated is
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Legislation
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FIPPA
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57(1)
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57(1)(d)
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57(4)
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Subject Index
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Signed by
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Mumtaz Jiwan
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Published
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Aug 16, 1994
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Type
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Order
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2013
Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. All Rights Reserved.
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