Statistically, the Capital Regional District (CRD) is fielding fewer Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA) requests than it has in years, officials say — but the amount of work those requests create for staff has reached a new high point.
The CRD’s Privacy and Information Services Division reported it responded to 255 Freedom of Information (FOI) requests in the 2025 fiscal year, reflecting a downward trend in the number of annual requests since reaching a peak of 284 in 2023.
But the volume of staff work those requests generated — measured in the number of pages processed — has doubled compared to the previous year, as the regional district tallied an all-time high of more than 22,000 pages of records, mostly related to more than one theme and requiring a response from two or more divisions within the CRD.
“There were multiple requests with page volumes in the thousands,” said Melissa Sexsmith, FOI and privacy manager, who brought the report to the CRD’s Governance and First Nations Relations Committee Wednesday, April 1. “The largest request that we processed in 2025 had over 4,000 pages.”
Requests with large page counts are more complex and resource-intensive, said Sexsmith, requiring substantially more staff time to review, consult and then ultimately release records in compliance with the law. She added that the large-request applicant paid a “substantial fee” that recovered some of the processing costs.
“And many of these requests now say, ‘all records related to’,” said Sexsmith. “And what that means is emails, Teams messages, formal documents and drafts — rather than just a request that might be for the final report.”
The governing FOIPPA requires public entities to respond to requests within 30 business days — a tall order for document-heavy requests that Sexsmith said was nonetheless mostly met.
“In spite of the growth in request size, the CRD responded to 96 per cent of requests within the legislated timelines,” she said, “and on average, in 2025 the CRD took 27 days.”
The most commonly requested records related either to building inspections (64 per cent) or bylaw matters (25 per cent), and were mostly submitted by individual members of the public; 17 per cent of FOI requests were made by realtors, according to CRD figures, with businesses and special interest groups making up nine and four per cent of all requests, respectively.
A bylaw amendment that came into effect in March is expected to change how some categories of building inspection-related records are accessed — moving responsibility for most of those record requests to the building department itself and hopefully reducing the number of pages handled under FOIPPA.
“I will admit to some extent it’s a bit of a shifting of duties from FOI and Privacy to Building Inspection,” said corporate services general manager Kristen Morley. “But part of that move is to hopefully reduce the workload on FOI and Privacy — so we don’t have to continue to increase our staffing needs.”
The CRD’s Privacy and Information Services Division is also responsible for reporting on data breaches; without going into specifics on privacy breach incidents, the report noted it investigated and remediated 12 “actual or suspected” privacy breaches last year.