There is no provision for anything that is frivolous and vexatious under the legislation. I would say that most if not all information commissioners before have not supported such an amendment. I'm not like that. I think that having “frivolous and vexatious” in the legislation would be appropriate. It would need to have proper safeguards. It should not be left to the determination of the institution only whether something is frivolous and vexatious. I think there has to be a review by my office.
There is also no discretion under the legislation on my part. The act says that once I receive a complaint I shall investigate. So I have no discretion to decide not to investigate certain things. As we discussed, there is no extension provided for multiple requests in one day.
So there is very little mechanism in the legislation to at least allow the Information Commissioner to make those kinds of determinations. I believe in Ontario the commissioner can actually say “I'm only going to investigate so many complaints by the same person”.
In July of this year I received 237 complaints from one complainant. They certainly all came in one month against the same institution. So the CBC is not necessarily the only institution that faces similar challenges at times.