PO-4630

In a request made under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, a law firm asked the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (the hospital) for records related to a COVID-19 outbreak at a long-term care home. The hospital issued a decision to grant partial access to the responsive records. The long-term care home appealed the hospital’s decision to disclose the information and said that the mandatory exemption for third party information at section 17(1) of FIPPA applied to all the information. The long-term care home also claimed that the records were protected from disclosure by section 3 of Quality of Care Information Protection Act. Additionally, it said that the law firm’s request was an abuse of process and asserted that it should be permitted to apply various discretionary exemptions that the hospital did not apply. In this decision, the adjudicator dismisses the long-term care home’s appeal and upholds the hospital’s access decision.