The Town of Okotoks was entitled to collect a peace officer’s entire two-hour body-camera recording to assess its relevance to a workplace investigation, Alberta’s privacy adjudicator has ruled. The town could also use conversations recorded outside the officer’s direct interactions with members of the public because they were logically connected to the complaint being investigated.
In Order FOIP2026-25, issued July 14, 2026, adjudicator Amanda Swanek found that the town had authority to collect and use the officer’s personal information as it did. She also found that an external lawyer’s review of the footage was an internal use of that information, rather than a disclosure to an outside party, because the lawyer was performing an employee’s function during a staffing vacancy.
The decision concerns a specific investigation in 2022 under Alberta’s former Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. It does not give public employers unrestricted authority to monitor staff, and it does not decide whether the underlying misconduct allegations were true.
Why the officer challenged the review
The officer, who is not named in the reasons, complained that the town had examined far more footage than was needed to investigate a public complaint about interactions with a contracting company. According to the officer, those interactions occupied roughly 20 minutes of the two-hour recording.
The officer objected to the town reviewing and using other conversations they considered private. They also argued that only their manager was entitled to investigate and view the footage, and that providing it to an outside lawyer violated their privacy.
The town said it had a statutory duty to investigate a written complaint about a peace officer’s work conduct. Its municipal enforcement manager position was vacant, so it retained a lawyer trained in workplace investigations to perform that function. It said the recording came from the dates covered by the complaint and that the disputed conversations concerned matters relevant to the investigation.
The town also said the officer had initially asked it to examine the recording because they believed it would answer the allegations. But Swanek’s ultimate findings rested on the town’s statutory collection and use powers, not a conclusion that asking for a review waived every privacy protection.
Collection came before deciding what was relevant
Section 33(c) of the FOIP Act permitted a public body to collect personal information directly related to and necessary for one of its operating programs or activities. Swanek applied earlier orders recognizing employee management, including investigations into work conduct, as such an activity.
The Peace Officer Act supplied the town’s investigative responsibility. The provisions reproduced in the decision required an authorized employer to investigate and dispose of a written complaint in accordance with the statutory procedures. Swanek found that collecting the officer’s footage formed part of that authorized investigation.
The dispute was not whether the town could obtain any body-camera footage. It was whether collecting the full recording went too far. Swanek rejected the officer’s interpretation that the camera policy covered only recorded interactions with the public. In her reading, the policy’s references to recorded events included anything the camera recorded.
That did not eliminate the statutory necessity test. Swanek explained, relying on earlier orders, that investigators need room to gather material that could reasonably be related and potentially relevant to their inquiry. Information does not have to prove useful in the end for its collection to have been lawful, and necessity does not mean absolute indispensability.
Applied here, the town could not isolate the relevant portions without first obtaining and reviewing the footage. Swanek therefore upheld collection of the recording in its entirety. She assessed the separate objection to how particular conversations were used in the next stage of her analysis.
Use still had to serve the investigation
Section 39(1)(a) permitted use for the purpose for which information was collected or for a consistent purpose. Section 39(4) separately limited use to what was necessary to carry out that purpose reasonably. The decision also set out section 41’s requirements for a consistent purpose: a reasonable, direct connection and necessity for statutory duties or a legally authorized program.
The town argued that the footage was used for the investigation itself, the same purpose for which it had been collected. Swanek found that the information used had a logical connection to the complaint. Conversations beyond the direct interactions with the contracting company were not automatically irrelevant simply because the officer regarded them as private.
She applied earlier reasoning that privacy review should not replace an investigator’s good-faith assessment of potentially relevant evidence. On the facts before her, the town and its investigator had used the footage reasonably for the investigation. She expressly found both the statutory purpose requirement and the limit on the extent of use were satisfied.
The policy reproduced in the decision also allowed officers to switch cameras off during personal work breaks, meetings and time in the municipal enforcement office. The town pointed to those exceptions in answering the officer’s claim that the camera had to remain on. The decision should therefore not be read as approving compulsory recording of every private moment throughout a shift.
An outside investigator performing an internal role
Swanek rejected the argument that hiring an external lawyer defeated the town’s authority to investigate. Although the code of conduct assigned internal inquiries to the municipal enforcement manager, the town could not be prevented from carrying out its legislated investigative duty because that position was vacant.
For privacy purposes, the lawyer was performing the function of a town employee. Reviewing and relying on the footage for that internal purpose was a use of personal information, not a disclosure. Swanek consequently did not need to decide whether an exception permitting disclosure under section 40 applied.
The officer also challenged access by other personnel. The town explained that information technology staff had to retrieve the footage, human resources staff needed to manage the investigation and understand its scope, and a municipal enforcement specialist assisted with policies and investigative processes during the vacancy.
Swanek accepted those explanations. She found that the policy’s list of positions permitted to view footage did not exhaust everyone who could be involved, and that human resources participation in dealing with a possible investigative outcome was a logical extension of the investigation.
The final order confirms the town’s authority to collect and use the information in this case and finds that it did not disclose the officer’s personal information. It imposes no corrective direction or damages award. The result turns on the authorized investigation, the connected information and the roles people performed—not a general exemption for every use of body-camera footage or every transfer to an external contractor.
