Severing Email Records (updated)
My office released a blog in June of 2017 regarding the obligation under section 8 of The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP) and The Local Authority Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (LA FOIP) and section 38(2) of The Health Information Protection Act (HIPA) to release as much information in a record as can be reasonably severed without disclosing the exempt information.
The advice provided in that blog continues to apply today – public bodies and trustees cannot apply an exemption to an entire page or record just because some or most of the information in the record is exempt. To comply with FOIP, LA FOIP and HIPA, public bodies and trustees need to conduct a line-by-line review of each page and only withhold information that is subject to an exemption. This basic rule applies regardless of the exemption that may be found to apply – mandatory or discretionary – and includes records where portions may be subject to solicitor-client privilege.
For email records, this means that a public body or trustee needs to consider if the ‘header’, ‘footer’ and ‘opening and closing statements’ of the email are exempt.
Definitions of these terms can be found in my office’s Review Report 051-2024. In that review, I stated that:
- ‘Header’ refers to the to, from, cc, bcc, date and subject line of the email.
- ‘Footer’ refers to the signature block (name, contact details and title of the sender) and confidentiality statement.
- The ‘opening and closing statements’ are greetings such as ‘Dear’, ‘Yours truly’, and “I hope you are having a good day” that people often include in emails.
If a public body or trustee claims that any of the above information is exempt, it will be required to demonstrate that the exemption applies if an applicant requests a review by my office.
For examples of recent reports where the Commissioner recommended release of this type of information in email records, see Review Reports 026-2019, 188-2022 and 024-2024.
For examples of cases where the public body proactively released this type of information to an applicant, see Review Reports 099-2024, which involved the City of Regina, and 051-2024, which involved the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
For more information about the obligation to sever and the application of exemptions, please see IPC Guide to FOIP, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, and the IPC Guide to LA FOIP, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. Our Modern Age Severing Webinar may also be of interest. It provides guidance on how to sever information from responsive records easily and electronically.