Closing the Door on Transparency and Accountability: the Information and Privacy Commissioner's Ex Parte Reviews of Public Bodies' Requests for Extensions Under FOIP

I’ve just finished a new paper on the the Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner’s use of an ex parte process for considering government agencies’ requests for extensions of time to respond to access to information requests, under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (“FOIP”).

The Commissioner’s extension decisions are important because agencies’ delays in responding to access to information requests can be tantamount to not providing the requesting information. That result, in turn, reduces government transparency and accountability and frustrates democracy. The Commissioner’s ex parte process is itself non-transparent and reduces accountability for extension decisions.

My paper assesses the Commissioner’s legal and policy reasons for using an ex parte process—that is, for not allowing records applicants to weigh in on extension decisions.

The Commissioner provided those reasons in a specific file in which the Commissioner’s delegate granted Alberta Energy an extension to respond to a request for records relating to that department’s May 2020 rescission of Alberta’s longstanding coal policy. In Blades v Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner, a Justice of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench rejected the records applicants’ procedural and substantive challenges to that extension decision. Therefore, the paper also assesses that Court decision as it relates to the Commissioner’s reasons for using an ex parte process for making extension decisions. 

The paper can be downloaded here and is also available for download on the SSRN website, here.