On April 12th the Federal Court dismissed a PIPEDA application, for the most part, because the applicant had been provided her personal information in the course of an Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada complaint investigation.
The applicant complained when she only received copies of records in her personnel file in response to an “all personal information” access request. The respondent provided the applicant with additional records in the course of the OPC investigation. The OPC was satisfied, and held the complaint to be well-founded and resolved, and made some recommendation about process that the respondent followed.
The Court held (based on three search affidavits) that the respondent had provided the applicant with all her personal information. It also held that the respondent was at fault for not providing the applicant with all of her personal information in a timely manner, but did not allow the application based on this finding. The basis for this disposition is not clear, but the Court did dismiss a number of remedies the applicant requested as unjustified and beyond its jurisdiction. Its reasoning also suggests that it viewed the applicant’s timeliness allegations as too trivial to be of consequence.
Though the Court dismissed the application, it did not award costs to the respondent because it had attempted to achieve exoneration in the application – an approach the Court said amounted to an unsuccessful cross-application. The applicant was self-represented.
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