On June 22nd, the Federal Court of Appeal ordered Public Works and Government Services Canada to re-determine an access request because it decided that a third-party’s consent to disclose its commercial information ruled out an exemption claim.
The request was for personnel rates offered to government by a staffing company. The company agreed to a contract clause that the Court held constituted a consent to disclose the information to the public at large.
The Court held that PWGSC erred by treating the clause as an “outright bar” to the company’s reliance on the third-party information exemptions in the Access to Information Act. It held that PWGSC ought to have first determined if any of the third-party exemptions applied and then considered whether or not to disclose the information because of the consent [thereby exercising the discretion granted in section 20(5)].
The decision also includes helpful dicta on the kind of evidence that third-parties must adduce to establish probable economic harm – dicta that supports an argument that the likelihood of harm can oftentimes be inferred from rather basic facts about the competitive context. (Rate or unit price information, in particular, is associated with some rather obvious potential harms.)
Canada (Office of the Information Commissioner) v. Calian Ltd., 2017 FCA 135 (CanLII).
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