Green Gables Bungalow Court Inc. has lost its judicial-review challenge to the Prince Edward Island Information and Privacy Commissioner’s refusal to conduct two inquiries into government plans to disclose records concerning the business.
Justice Gary G. Demeulenaere dismissed the application in Green Gables Bungalow Court Inc. v. PEI Information and Privacy Commissioner, 2026 PESC 24, released August 31, 2026, by the Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island. He found that the commissioner had reasonably exercised her discretion not to proceed to inquiries.
The company was a third party opposing disclosure, not the person seeking access to the records. The court reviewed the commissioner’s refusal to inquire; it did not decide the departments’ original disclosure decisions afresh.
Two requests, overlapping records
The Department of Justice and Public Safety received an access request for fire-inspection, permit and related records concerning the business. The Department of Fisheries, Tourism, Sport and Culture received a separate request for permits, licences, certifications and compliance-related correspondence. Both requests covered records from August 2021 to August 2024.
Justice and Public Safety identified five responsive pages, while Tourism identified 58. The Justice and Public Safety records were included within Tourism’s larger set.
Each department invited the company to make submissions about section 14 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. After considering its objections, the departments said they intended to disclose the records, with an email address protected under the Act’s personal-information provision.
The company asked the commissioner to review both decisions. On May 9, 2025, she declined to conduct either inquiry under section 64.1. The access requests’ references to violations and non-compliance were descriptions of records being sought, not findings by the court that the business had breached regulatory requirements.
Reasonableness, not a fresh hearing
The company argued that the commissioner had misunderstood the records and systematically misapplied the preliminary test for proceeding to an inquiry. It urged the court to apply the non-deferential correctness standard, characterizing the issue as a general question of law of central importance to the legal system.
Demeulenaere rejected that characterization. The company had not supplied an evidentiary or precedential foundation showing that the commissioner used an incorrect legal test. Its disagreement concerned how an established test had been applied to the facts and how statutory discretion had been exercised.
The judge distinguished the human-rights decisions on which the company relied and applied the presumptive reasonableness standard. That required examining the commissioner’s reasoning in context, rather than asking what result the court would have reached itself.
All three parts of the exemption test mattered
The commissioner had explained that a third party bears the burden of establishing that the requester has no right of access. At the preliminary stage, the company needed at least a prima facie case that section 14 might apply.
The section 14(1) test has three cumulative requirements. The exemption requires information revealing trade secrets or specified commercial, financial, labour-relations, scientific or technical information, supplied in confidence expressly or implicitly, whose disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause a listed consequence, such as significant competitive harm. The commissioner found no prima facie case under paragraph (a), which was enough to end the matter. She also considered paragraph (b) and concluded that the company’s position could not succeed under the established interpretation. She therefore did not need to consider paragraph (c).
Demeulenaere found a coherent explanation for those conclusions. Repeating the arguments about the exemption did not establish that the refusal to conduct inquiries was unreasonable.
The court also declined to admit a new affidavit from the company’s sole director. The company had not brought a preliminary motion for permission to introduce it, and judicial review ordinarily examines the record before the decision-maker. Separately, the company withdrew its procedural-fairness grounds at the hearing; those grounds were not decided on their merits.
The application was dismissed, with each party bearing its own costs. The commissioner did not seek costs, and the judge found no exceptional circumstances warranting a costs award involving the administrative decision-maker.
