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Document
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P-1478
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File #
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P_9700172
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Institution/HIC
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Ministry of the Solicitor General and CorrectionalServices
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Summary
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NATURE OF THE APPEAL: A request was made to the Ministry of the Solicitor General and CorrectionalServices (the Ministry) under the Freedom of Information and Protection ofPrivacy Act (the Act ) for a correction of information which relatesto the requester or, should a correction not be made, that a notice ofdisagreement be attached to the record. The information is contained within the parole file of an individual whoasked for assistance from the requester in obtaining parole. The requester wasinformed that information relating to him was raised during the individual'sparole revocation. The requester obtained written authorization from theindividual to disclose the information contained in the parole file to him. The Ministry refused to make the correction and notified the requester thatthe notice of disagreement provided by the requester was being attached to thefile. The requester (now the appellant) appealed the Ministry's decision torefuse to correct the information. This office sent a Notice of Inquiry to the Ministry and the appellant. Inresponse to the Notice of Inquiry, both the appellant, through hisrepresentative, and the Ministry submitted representations. PRELIMINARY ISSUE: Throughout his representations, the appellant argues that the fact that theinformation contained in the file was provided to the Ministry constitutes aninvasion of his privacy. This is not the issue that I have before me. If theappellant is concerned that his personal information may have been collected,used or disclosed inappropriately by an institution which is governed by the Act , his remedy is to make a privacy complaint to the ComplianceDepartment of this office. DISCUSSION: PERSONAL INFORMATION Section 2(1) of the Act provides, in part, that "personalinformation" means recorded information about an identifiable individual. I have reviewed the parole file as provided by the appellant and I amsatisfied that each of the documents contains some information that qualifies asthe personal information of the appellant. CORRECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION Although I have found that the record contains the appellant's personalinformation, this still leaves the question of exactly what information in therecord the appellant wishes to have corrected. Throughout the course of theappeal, a number of efforts were made to determine this. On the date that the Notice of Inquiry was sent to the appellant, theAppeals Officer called the appellant's representative and asked her to clearlyidentify in her representations the information the appellant wishes to havecorrected. However, the representations did not clearly identify specificinformation. The appellant's statement of disagreement refers to generalcategories of information. Some of the information in the parole file was highlighted. The appellant'srepresentative was contacted and asked if the highlighting indicated theinformation which the appellant wished corrected. The representative repliedthat the highlighting did not represent the information at issue but rather wasinformation she wanted to bring to our attention. When specifically asked whatinformation the appellant wanted corrected, his representative stated anythingthat makes reference to the drug trade "or whatever", anything "thatthe Ministry cannot prove." Because the appellant's request for a correction of his personal informationwas very general and the Ministry responded in a general way, I will address all the appellant's personal information found in the recordprovided to me in making my decision. Sections 47(2)(a) and (b) of the Act provide for correction requestsand statements of disagreement relating to one's own personal information. These sections state: Every individual who is given access under subsection (1) to personalinformation is entitled to, (a)request correction of the personal information where the individualbelieves there is an error or omission therein; (b)require that a statement of disagreement be attached to theinformation reflecting any correction that was requested but not made; There is a difference in wording between sections 47(2)(a) and (b). Section47(2)(a) indicates that individuals may request correction oftheir personal information, while section 47(2)(b) indicates that individualsmay require a statement of disagreement to be attached to arecord reflecting any correction which was requested but not made. In particular, because section 47(2)(a) only provides a right to request a correction, it is my view that it gives the Ministry a discretionary power toaccept or reject the correction request. I am reinforced in the view thatsection 47(2)(a) confers a discretionary power on the Ministry by the wording ofsection 47(2)(b), which compensates for the Ministry's discretion to refuse acorrection request under section 47(2)(a) by allowing individuals who do notreceive favourable responses to correction requests to require that a statement of disagreement be attached instead (Order M-777). The appellant submits that he wishes to correct anything that the Ministry "cannotprove." The appellant appears to believe that in order to deal with hisappeal, this office is required to investigate his allegations that the contentsof the records are incorrect, decide what actually transpired, and "correct"the records by ordering the removal of the information from the record. In my view, if I were to adopt the appellant's view of section 47(2), theability of government institutions to maintain whole classes of records of thiskind would be compromised in a way which the legislature cannot possibly haveintended. The parole file as provided by the appellant consists of a post-suspensionreport; case supervision notes; a letter addressed "To Whom it May Concern"indicating that the individual has permission to move; a violation report and "PostSuspension Reading Information" forms. Information about the appellantappears in the file by virtue of his association with the individual whoseparole was in question. The information relating to the appellant in the majority of the documentswas obtained from professional sources or the individual on parole by anindividual carrying out his or her duties. In one or two instances, theinformation reflects the interpretation or reporting of the informationprovided. Records of this kind cannot be said to be "incorrect" or "inerror" or "incomplete" if they simply reflect the informationgathered whether or not this information is true. Therefore, in my view,whether the information is true or f
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Legislation
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Subject Index
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Signed by
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Marianne Miller
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Published
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Oct 30, 1997
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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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