On June 15th, the Information and Privacy/Commissioner Ontario dismissed a privacy complaint that alleged a school board breached the Education Act and MFIPPA by producing a student’s OSR in response to his human rights application.
The Board produced the OSR and filed it in a brief of documents to be used at a pending Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario hearing, all pursuant to the Tribunal’s rules. The complainant objected, and in a preliminary hearing, the HRTO directed the complainant to consent or face dismissal of his application. The complainant did not consent, his application was dismissed and he subsequently filed a privacy complaint with the IPC.
The IPC held that MFIPPA prevails over the statutory privilege provision in the Education Act and that the IPC is therefore “not bound to consider section 266 of the Education Act in its deliberations.” It also held that the OSR was information “otherwise available” to the Board and therefore open to its use under the provision of MFIPPA that stipulates that MFIPPA “does not impose any limitation on the information otherwise available by law to a party to litigation.”
The IPC did recommend that, going forward, the Board refrain from unilaterally handling the OSR when its potential use and disclosure is in dispute: “… the Board should make efforts to seek direction from an administrative tribunal or court prior to disclosing the information contained within an Ontario School Record during the course of litigation.”
York Region District School Board (Re), 2016 CanLII 37587 (ON IPC).
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