ORDER P-1360
Appeal P_9600385
Ministry of Health
NATURE OF THE APPEAL:
The appellant is a newspaper reporter. She submitted a request to the Ministry of Health (the Ministry) under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act) for access to financial information regarding a named health centre (the Centre). In particular, the appellant sought access to the Centre’s financial statements, operating plans and budgets from 1985 to 1997, and financial information about the Centre’s property holdings and the Centre’s Trust Fund over the 1985 - 1996 period.
The Ministry located seven responsive records. Pursuant to section 28 of the Act, the Ministry notified the Centre of the request. The Centre consented to the disclosure of Record 1, but objected to disclosure of the remaining six records on the basis of sections 17(1)(a) and (c).
Subsequently, the Ministry issued a decision to the requester. It granted access to Record 1, but denied access to the remaining records under sections 17(1) (third party information) and 21(1) (invasion of privacy) of the Act.
The appellant appealed the Ministry’s decision to deny access under section 17(1). She indicated that she was not seeking the personal information, such as income, of any individual.
This office sent a Notice of Inquiry to the Ministry, the appellant and the Centre. All three parties submitted representations in response to this notice. In her representations, the appellant referred to the public interest in disclosure of the records. In my view, she has raised the application of section 23, the so-called “public interest override”.
The first issue to be determined in this appeal is whether section 17(1) applies to exempt Records 2 through 7 from disclosure. If I find that section 17(1) applies to any part of the records, I will go on to determine whether the public interest override in section 23 applies to the exempt information.
The records at issue consist of the following:
Record 2 letter dated January 31, 1995 from the Centre to the Comprehensive Health Organization Program (the CHOP) of the Ministry (1 page). This record indicates that two schedules are attached, however, these schedules were not included with the copy of the records provided to this office. The Ministry advised that these two schedules are duplicates of the last two pages of Record 5. Since the information is identical, my discussion of Record 5 will include these two attachments, and any discussion of Record 2 will be limited to the letter portion only;
Record 3 letter dated January 27, 1995 from the Centre to the CHOP with four attachments (11 pages);
Record 4 letter dated January 20, 1995 from the Centre to the CHOP with three attachments (5 pages);
Record 5 Financial Statements for the Centre for the year ending March 31, 1994 (10 pages);
Record 6 Financial Statements for the Centre for the year ending March 31, 1993 (10 pages);
Record 7 letter dated September 25, 1992 from the Centre to the Community Health Branch of the Ministry with the Centre’s Financial Statement for the year ending March 31, 1992 attached (11 pages).
DISCUSSION:
THIRD PARTY INFORMATION
Sections 17(1)(a) and (c) of the Act provide:
A head shall refuse to disclose a record that reveals a trade secret or scientific, technical, commercial, financial or labour relations information, supplied in confidence implicitly or explicitly, where the disclosure could reasonably be expected to,
(a) prejudice significantly the competitive position or interfere significantly with the contractual or other negotiations of a person, group of persons, or organization;
(c) result in undue loss or gain to any person, group, committee or financial institution or agency.
For a record to qualify for exemption under section 17(1)(a) or (c), the Ministry and/or the Centre must satisfy each of the following requirements:
the record must reveal information that is a trade secret or scientific, technical, commercial, financial or labour relations information; and
the information must have been supplied to the institution in confidence, either implicitly or explicitly; and
the prospect of disclosure of the record must give rise to a reasonable expectation that one of the harms specified in section 17(1)(a) or (c) will occur.
I will consider each of these requirements in turn.
Type of Information
The Ministry and the Centre both submit that the records contain financial information. The Centre also claims that the records contain commercial information.
I have reviewed the records at issue and I find that Records 5, 6 and the attachment to Record 7 (all of which consist of financial statements) qualify as financial information, and the first requirement has been satisfied with respect to these records. The attachments to Record 3 contain fixed asset schedules, and the attachments to Record 4 consist of analyses of the financial statements for the five fiscal years ending December 31, 1990. I find that the information in these attachments also qualifies as financial information.
Records 2, 3, 4 and 7 (only the letter portion of each record) are covering letters. As such, they refer to the financial documentation which is attached to each letter. I find, however, that the letters do not contain, nor would they, in and of themselves, reveal financial or commercial information. As all three requirements must be satisfied for a record to qualify for exemption under section 17(1), I will not consider the covering letters in Records 2, 3, 4 and 7 further. As no other exemptions have been claimed for this information, it should be disclosed to the appellant.
Supplied in Confidence
In order to meet this requirement, the Ministry and/or the Centre must establish that the information was supplied to the Ministry, and further, that it was supplied in confidence, either implicitly or explicitly.
It is clear from a review of the records that the attachments to Records 3, 4, and 7 consist of documentation which was attached to correspondence sent to the Ministry by the Centre and, therefore, was “supplied” to the Ministry. The Ministry indicates that all of the records, including the financial statements in Records 5 and 6, were supplied to the Ministry by the Centre as required under the terms of the contract between the Centre and the Ministry. I am satisfied that Records 5 and 6 were also “supplied” to the Ministry.
I must now determine whether this information was supplied to the Ministry in confidence, either implicitly or explicitly.
The Ministry and the Centre both state that the detailed financial information in the records was supplied by the Centre in confidence and that the Centre’s expectation that it be maintained in confidence was reasonable. In support of this contention, the Ministry indicates that:
It is the Community Health Branch’s long-standing practice to accept and treat this information confidentially, and the [Centre] has a reasonable expectation that their detailed financial information will remain confidential. From the time this financial information is received, the Branch treats this information strictly confidential in accordance with its practice.
Having carefully considered the representations on this issue and the records