An adopted person made a request to the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa (CASO) under the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017 (the CYFSA or the Act), for access to her complete file, including information about her birth parents, particularly about her birth father. The CASO granted partial access to the requested records, disclosing all information but for identifying information about the requester’s birth parents, which it redacted. The requester filed a complaint with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (the IPC) because she seeks access to her complete and unredacted file, including the identifying information about her birth parents.
In this decision, the adjudicator finds that the redacted information, the identifying information about the requester’s birth parents, is excluded from the scope of Part X of the CYFSA under the exception at section 285(4)(a), as it is information that relates to an adoption. As a result of the application of the exception, Part X does not apply to the requested information and the requester does not have a right of access to her birth parents’ identifying information under that part. The complaint is dismissed.