PDF version: There’s no right to absolute privacy when you want to build something in a city
Case commented on: Edmonton (City) v. Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner), 2011 ABQB 226
There is no absolute right to privacy in the context of planning and development within a municipality. In a contest between the right to privacy and the right to enjoy one’s own property without interference from a neighbour, a balance must be struck. Otherwise, we’d be constantly in each other’s faces over actions such as one neighbour arbitrarily chopping down trees straddling the line between two homes or mowing down a line of bushes running between two houses. One person’s pleasure is another person’s annoyance – the source of such annoyance could be something as seemingly innocuous as an outdoor hot tub on a second floor balcony.
When an Edmonton property owner named Kim Mah read details about her application for a development permit in a community newsletter, she complained to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner that her privacy was breached. Rather oddly, in light of the fact that neighbouring property owners do have the right to know about such matters, a Commission adjudicator agreed. Even stranger, the Commissioner found that an appeal board with the independent power to review development proposals was instead a City of Edmonton department. Rather appropriately, the City’s legal department applied for a judicial review. Quite rightly, a Queen’s Bench judge read the relevant legislation against the facts, found that the Commissioner had erred, and sent Mah’s complaint back to the Privacy Commissioner to reconsider.