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The Ministry of Government Services (now the Management Board Secretariat) (the Secretariat) received a request pursuant to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act) for access to "a list of all job competitions advertised by the Ministry of Government Services beginning Jan. 1, 1991 to the present, inclusive." The Secretariat responded, pursuant to section 57(3) of the Act, by providing the requester with an estimate of the fee required to be paid under the Act to cover the cost of conducting the search for records responsive to the request.
The Secretariat's decision stated:
Access cannot be granted to this record as it is not available in the format requested. In order to provide you with this record, it will have to be compiled from a large volume of files.
Section 57 of the Act requires fees to be charged in order to pay for certain costs incurred by the Secretariat in processing requests. Details of the fee estimate required to process this request are:
Search Time:
$7.50 for every quarter hour of search time;
Estimate of 23.25 hours @ $30.00 per hour minus
two free hours of search time:
Total: $637.50
The requester appealed the Secretariat's decision regarding the search time stating that "I have reasonable and probable grounds to believe that this request can be made with less than two (2) hours effort therefore the time estimate would not be reasonable."
Mediation of the appeal was not successful and notice that an inquiry was being conducted to review the decision of the Board was sent to the appellant and the Secretariat. Representations were received from the Secretariat only.
The Secretariat has confirmed that upon payment of the required fee, access to the entire record will be granted.
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