Yukon health department agrees to revisit school-water records request

Yukon’s Department of Health and Social Services agreed to reconsider a request for records about lead in school water after an information-and-privacy adjudicator found that the chief medical officer of health was covered by the territory’s access law.

In a January 26, 2026 investigation report, adjudicator Amy Steele rejected the department’s position that records held by the chief medical officer in carrying out statutory duties fell outside the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, or ATIPPA.

The department’s February 14 response accepted the recommendation to reprocess the request. But it expressly reserved its position on the report’s legal findings and reasoning, saying it was determining its own legal basis for the chief medical officer’s coverage under ATIPPA.

A second dispute over missing records

Access request 24-701 sought records discussing lead in Yukon school water from February 1, 2024, through February 19, 2025. The department initially released some information and withheld other material under several provisions of the access statute.

An informal complaint-resolution process led the department to release some of the withheld records. The applicant then raised a separate concern: the response contained no records from the chief medical officer of health.

After the commissioner’s office recommended contacting the chief medical officer, the department said the officer was exercising independent statutory duties under the Public Health and Safety Act rather than working on the department’s behalf. Its amended response therefore said there were no additional records to provide. A further complaint led to the formal investigation in file ATP-ADJ-2025-08-166.

The adjudication concerned access to records, not whether school water was safe or whether anyone had acted negligently.

Why the officer fell within the department

The department argued that the chief medical officer was an independent statutory office that would have to be specifically designated as a public body in regulations before ATIPPA could apply.

Steele distinguished a statutory officer from a separately constituted statutory office. The Public Health and Safety Act established the officer’s role, but did not expressly create an independent office with powers to hire staff or submit its own budget. She contrasted that arrangement with legislation establishing other independent offices.

The report also examined the chief medical officer’s relationship with the department. The health minister administered the governing statute and could assign additional duties and functions. The department supplied office space, equipment and administrative assistance. Government publications and organizational information also placed the role within Health and Social Services.

Taken together, Steele found, those features brought the chief medical officer within the department over which the responsible minister presided. That department was already a public body under ATIPPA; a separate regulatory designation was unnecessary on that analysis.

The department had relied heavily on a 2002 Yukon Court of Appeal decision concerning the Yukon Medical Council. Steele found that analysis did not resolve this case: the former access legislation used materially different definitions, and the council was a statutory body rather than an individual statutory officer.

An alternative route through ATIPPA’s employee definition

Steele also found that the chief medical officer met ATIPPA’s definition of an employee through two alternative categories: a contracted service provider and an officer of the public body.

The report relied on the government contract registry’s description of a contract for physician services under the Public Health and Safety Act. It also considered the officer’s appointment and authority to exercise statutory powers. The finding concerned the access statute’s definition, rather than deciding employment status for every legal purpose.

The department had not supplied the contract itself or information about which school-water records the chief medical officer held. Steele nevertheless concluded that responsive records held by the officer were treated under ATIPPA as held by the department.

The statutory context supported that conclusion, she found. Yukon legislation expressly excluded some other officers or bodies from access-law coverage. The chief medical officer’s governing statute instead contained a narrow exception to a personal-information collection notice requirement during a health emergency. Steele treated that limited exception as consistent with the officer otherwise being covered.

She also emphasized ATIPPA’s transparency purposes. Excluding the officer altogether would prevent access requests about the exercise of significant public-health powers, including decisions affecting individuals and businesses.

Reprocessing, with access exceptions still available

The report did not require unconditional disclosure of every document. It found that responsive records held by the chief medical officer had to be considered under ATIPPA, subject to the statute’s applicable exceptions.

Steele recommended reprocessing the request to include those records and providing the applicant with an amended response within 30 days of the report. The report also explained the statutory route to court review if a recommendation was rejected or deemed rejected through non-compliance.

In the later response, Deputy Minister Matt King committed the department to reprocessing request 24-701 and including any responsive records held by the chief medical officer. The letter said an amended response would be provided to the ATIPP Office on or before March 9, 2026, while maintaining the department’s reservation about the adjudicator’s legal analysis.