Enlarged Scope Of Distribution Of Information Contained In Files Held By Québec's Public Bodies

Certain amendments to the Regulation respecting the distribution of information and the protection of personal information1 (the "Regulation") came into force on April 1, 2015. The purpose of those amendments is to widen the scope of the information which some Québec public bodies are required to distribute on their websites under the Act respecting documents held by public bodies and the protection of personal information2 (the "Act").3

In general, the amendments are intended to "promote government transparency through the proactive distribution of information related to the management of the financial resources of public bodies and enable citizens to follow Government activities and expenditures".4 Among these amendments, however, is one in particular that is likely to impact the management of offtitle searches in due diligence audits and/or the carrying out of environmental assessments.

The amendments resulted in the adoption of new rules including:

most replies provided by some Québec public bodies to requests for access must now be published on such bodies' website; and such replies may then be studied, analyzed and scrutinized by any person. These rules will have the following possible consequences:

to indicate to third parties the source of a potential transaction; to make public certain information concerning an immovable property or a business; to establish new sources of research in advance of a transaction. It must be remembered that, in commercial transactions, as well as in the performance of environmental assessments, requests are often made for access to the files of government authorities, in order to ascertain whether there are any legal issues relating to certain properties which cannot be identified by means of a search in the land registry. Such searches generally involve the making of requests for access to public bodies, in order to obtain copies of information of various kinds contained in their records concerning the properties about which the information is sought.

Since April 1, 2015, to the extent that they are available under the Act, some Québec public bodies are required to distribute, on a website:

(...) the documents sent under a request for access, together with the anonymized decision of the person in charge of access to documents, except for documents containing:

personal information, unless the information is considered public information within the meaning of section 55 of the Act; information supplied...

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