Annual Reports Issued On Canadian Access To Information And Privacy Laws

On October 1, 2024, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) tabled its annual reports on the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act (collectively, the Annual Reports). The Annual Reports summarize how the OPC fulfilled its responsibilities under the Acts in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

Section 94 of the Access to Information Act and section 72 of the Privacy Act require the head of every federal government institution to submit an annual report to Parliament on the administration of the Acts for each fiscal year. In its annual report on the Access to Information Act, the OPC highlighted several activities and statistics from the previous year, including the following:

• The OPC received 83 formal access requests, which were in addition to 14 requests carried forward from the previous year (i.e., totalling 97 requests). The OPC provided responses to 97% of these requests with 3 requests being carried over to the next reporting period.
• For the formal requests that were processed, 15 cases (15.9%) resulted in the full release of information and 48 cases (51.1%) resulted in partial release.
• The OPC received 4 complaints from the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada with all complaints either ceasing to be investigated or found to not be well-founded.

Similarly, the following are some of the key activities and statistics in the OPC’s annual report on the Privacy Act:

• The OPC received 101 formal requests for information, which were in addition to 2 requests carried forward from the previous year (i.e., totalling 103 requests). The OPC closed 101 of these requests during the year with only 2 being carried over to the next reporting period.
• For the formal requests that were processed, there were 6 instances (5.9%) where information was fully disclosed and 19 instances (18.8%) resulting in partial disclosure.
• The OPC received 7 complaints with all complaints either ceasing to be investigated or found to not be well-founded.

For further information, the full annual reports on the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act can be found here and here, respectively.

Summary By: Amy Ariganello