I'm happy you made that distinction, because the act does make a distinction. It's the request itself that has to be abusive, malicious, vexatious or unreasonable, not the requester. We are spending a lot of time reviewing the wording of the request, making sure that what's being asked meets the intent of the Access to Information Act and that the request itself is not abusive or vexatious.
The application for the authorization to not act on a request is made by the department. We review it. Sometimes, just by reviewing the argument of the institutions, we can say no right away. It is an exceptional mechanism, because we are taking away somebody's right of access. We make sure that these representations from the institutions are shared with the requester so that they have a chance to respond, and then, based on the response and the argument from the institutions and the wording of the request, we issue a decision to allow or not allow the institution to not act on the request.