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Summary
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NATURE OF THE APPEAL: The City of Hamilton (the City) received the following access request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act ): I would like access to all records related to the review of the management and or operations of the City's emergency medical service (EMS). Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, please include all memoranda, e-mails and consultant reports. Please also include all records related to the dismissal of the manager of the EMS [a named individual]. The City identified six files of responsive records, and provided the requester with partial access to some of them. The City claimed that almost all of the records fell within the scope of either section 52(3)2 or section 52(3)3, and were thereby excluded from the Act . The City stated: The records for which exemptions are claimed relate to the EMS organization, in particular staffing, organizational changes, the work environment and other personal and employment related matters. These responsive records are not subject to the Act , pursuant to section 52(3)3. The City denied access to two records on the basis of the section 10 exemption (third party commercial information), as well as section 11 (economic interests of the institution) for one of these records. The City also raised section 14 (invasion of privacy) as the reason for denying access to seven records. The requester attended at the City and reviewed the partially disclosed records. He was provided with an index of records at that time. The requester (now the appellant) appealed the City's decision. A number of records were removed from the scope of the appeal during mediation, including four of the records covered by the section 14 exemption claim. Mediation was otherwise not successful and the appeal was transferred to the adjudication stage. Because the City relied on section 52(3) as the basis for denying almost all of the records, I decided to restrict my inquiry to that section initially. If a record falls within the scope of section 52(3), it is excluded from the Act . I first sought representations from the City. In its representations, the City withdrew section 52(3)2, leaving section 52(3)3 as the only issue in the inquiry. The City also agreed to disclose a number of additional records to the appellant It is not clear to me whether these records have in fact been disclosed, so I will include them in my order provisions here. I then provided the appellant with the non-confidential portions of the City's representations and sought representations from him. The appellant responded with representations, which were in turn shared with the City. The City submitted a final set of reply representations. RECORDS: The records the City agreed to disclose during the course of this inquiry are: File #1 - Ambulance Personnel Issues - Records 6, 7, 31, 32, 50, 63 (in part), 75 and 79 File #4 - Ambulance Re-organization File - Records 1, 2 (in part), 4 (in part), 5 (in part), 7 and 10 File #5 - Ambulance - Records 4, 6, 10, 11(a), 12, 19, 21, 25, 26, 26(a) and 26(b) Accordingly, the records remaining at issue in this appeal are: File #1 - Ambulance Personnel Issues - all 83 identified records, with the exception of Records 1, 4, 5, 5A, 6, 7, 12, 13, 31, 32, 47, 50 (including the attachment), 63 (in part), 64, 75 and 79 File #2 - Ambulance Amalgamation - Records 1-5, 7 and 8 File #4 - Ambulance Re-organization File - Records 2 (in part), 3, 4 (in part), 5 (in part), 6, 8, 9 and 11 File #5 - Ambulance - Records 1-24, with the exception of Records 4, 6, 7, 10, 11(a), 12, 19 and 21 File #6 - EMS Organizational Review - Records 1-5 DISCUSSION: Introduction The City claims section 52(3)3 as the basis for denying access to the following records: File #1 - all remaining records, except Records 3, 58 and 64(a) File #2 - all remaining records File #4 - all remaining records File #5 - all remaining records, except Record 1 and page 2 of Record 3 File #6 - all records Having compared the contents of Records 3 and 58 with other File #1 records, in my view, they are also appropriately considered in the context of section 52(3)3. Section 52(3)3 reads as follows: (3) Subject to subsection (4), this Act does not apply to records collected, prepared, maintained or used by or on behalf of an institution in relation to any of the following: … 3. Meetings, consultations, discussions or communications about labour relations or employment-related matters in which the institution has an interest. None of the section 52(4) exceptions are relevant in the context of this appeal. In order to fall within the scope of paragraph 3 of section 52(3), the City must establish that: the records were collected, prepared, maintained or used by the City or on its behalf; and this collection, preparation, maintenance or usage was in relation to meetings, consultations, discussions or communications; and these meetings, consultations, discus
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