CANADA: Capital Health 'breached duty' on restaurant records

28.jan.08
Edmonton Journal
Duncan Thorne

Capital Health breached its duty in failing to handle an Edmonton Journal request about dirty restaurants "openly, accurately and completely," says the provincial information and privacy commissioner.
In a ruling he will make public on Tuesday, Commissioner Frank Work was cited as saying the health authority initially failed to reveal it had a database that tracks restaurant inspections and health orders, and failed to provide electronic records from the database.
The story says that Capital Health also failed to provide information identifying restaurants and took too long, under freedom-of-information law, to meet a legal deadline for responding to the access requests, Work says. He has ordered Capital Health to refund access fees of $1,240, saying the information is in the public interest.
The Journal was eventually able to publish most of the requested restaurant records online in late September of 2006, after first making a formal application for the information in May 2005. That information, periodically updated, remains available online.
Work finds that the health authority should have anticipated the public interest in seeing restaurant inspection records. He refers to "the immense interest by the public in the information after it was published on The Edmonton Journal's website.