ORDER M-548
Appeal M-9500001
City of Niagara Falls
NATURE OF THE APPEAL:
The City of Niagara Falls (the City) received a request for access to an incident report prepared by the Niagara Falls Fire Department. The requester gave the location and date of the incident, as well as the incident number assigned by the Fire Department.
The City notified the owner of the property of the request. Despite the property owner's objections, the City decided to disclose the record to the requester. The property owner appealed the City's decision, stating that the record contained her personal information and its disclosure would be an unjustified invasion of her personal privacy under the following exemption contained in the Act:
- invasion of privacy - section 14
A Notice of Inquiry was sent to the City, the appellant and the original requester. Representations were received from the appellant and the original requester only.
DISCUSSION:
In order to satisfy the requirements of the introductory wording of the definition of personal information in section 2(1) of the Act, the record must contain information about identifiable individuals. I have examined the record and, in my view, it does not contain information which relates to identifiable individuals and it does not, therefore, satisfy the requirements of the definition of personal information. The records indicate that the Fire Department was dispatched to a particular address and give a general description of the incident (which involved an unnamed individual who is not the appellant). This is not sufficient, in my view, to identify any particular individual. Consequently, I find that the record does not contain personal information of the appellant or any other identifiable individual.
Having determined that the record does not contain personal information, I find that the invasion of privacy exemption provided by section 14 of the Act is not available.
ORDER:
I uphold the City's decision.
I order the City to disclose the record to the requester within thirty-five (35) days after the date of this order but not before the thirtieth (30th) day after the date of this order.
Original signed by: June 8, 1995
Holly Big Canoe
Inquiry Officer