Annual Report: 2003-2004

A fundamental principle of the Access to Information Act, set forth in section 2, is that decisions on disclosure of government information should be reviewed independently of government. The commissioner’s office and the Federal Court of Canada are the two levels of independent review provided by the law.

Requesters dissatisfied with the government’s responses to their access requests first must complain to the Information Commissioner. If they are dissatisfied with the results of his investigation, they have the right to ask the Federal Court to review the department’s response. If the Information Commissioner is dissatisfied with a department's response to his recommendations, he has the right, with the requester's consent, to ask the Federal Court to review the matter.

This reporting year, the commissioner’s office completed investigations of 970 complaints. Only eight cases could not be resolved to the commissioner’s satisfaction and these resulted in three new Applications for Review being filed by the commissioner. Three applications for court review were filed by dissatisfied requesters. Third parties opposing disclosure filed 13 applications.

This year, with respect to access litigation, the Federal Court of Canada issued 12 decisions, the Federal Court of Appeal issued 3 decisions and no decisions were issued by the Supreme Court of Canada. Summaries follow of the decisions in which the Information Commissioner is or was a party.