Short holding. A public body can't leave an access request unanswered while it works through other requests from the same person. In Sturgeon Public School Division (Re), 2026 CanLII 110402 (AB OIPC), Alberta's Information and Privacy Commissioner found that the division had failed to meet the response deadline in section 13 of the Access to Information Act. The adjudicator ordered a response and written confirmation of compliance. He didn't decide whether any particular record should ultimately be released.
The applicant made a request to Sturgeon Public School Division on October 28, 2025. By January 5, 2026, no response had arrived, and the applicant turned to the Commissioner's office for review. Mediation and investigation didn't resolve the complaint. The matter proceeded to an inquiry, where the question was narrow. Had the division complied with the statutory time limit for responding?
Section 13 ordinarily requires the head of a public body to make every reasonable effort to respond within 30 business days after the request meets the Act's requirements. The statute allows for situations including a permitted extension, transfer, or the proper disregard or abandonment of a request. It also gives silence a specific legal consequence. Failure to respond within the applicable period is treated as a decision refusing access, even though the institution may never have made a considered decision about disclosure.
The division didn't claim that its silence was a lawful disclosure decision. It explained that the applicant had made numerous other requests and had another matter before the Commissioner's office. In that workload, this particular request had inadvertently been overlooked. Nearly a year after it was submitted, the applicant still hadn't received a response. Adjudicator John Gabriele found noncompliance with section 13. The explanation for the delay helped describe what happened, but it didn't convert a missed statutory obligation into compliance.
The division said it would process the request. Under section 64, the adjudicator ordered it to do so as the Act requires and to notify him in writing of compliance within 50 business days after receiving the order. That's a direction to make and communicate the required response. It isn't a direction to disclose all records regardless of applicable exemptions, nor a conclusion about the merits of the original request.
The practical problem isn't confined to schools. Public bodies often handle multiple requests from the same applicant, sometimes alongside complaints and reviews. A system that tracks people or general correspondence without tracking each request separately can still miss one enforceable deadline. This decision is a useful reminder that an inadvertent administrative omission can trigger a statutory deemed refusal. The applicant shouldn't need to show bad faith before a response duty can be enforced.
There are limits to what this short order establishes. The adjudicator didn't decide any exemption, privilege, public interest exception or ultimate entitlement to information. He made no finding that the division intentionally suppressed records. The order is also no answer to whether the division later complied. Its significance lies in the separation between the obligation to respond and the eventual merits of disclosure. Where the Act makes silence a refusal, public bodies have to treat the response clock as part of the decision itself, not as an administrative courtesy.