MFIPPA's 30-Day Response Clock, Explained: When It Starts, When It Pauses, and What Goes in Your Decision Letter

Every Ontario municipal FOI coordinator knows the headline: you have 30 days to respond to an access request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA). The parts that get clerks in trouble are the parts around the edges — when the 30 days actually start, when the clock can be extended, how a third-party notice fits into the timeline, and what your decision letter has to contain for an extension or third-party notice to hold up on appeal.

This post walks the statute line by line, plus the operational practice, so that you can write a compliant response letter without guessing.

Short answer: the clock runs from the day a complete, fee-paid written request is received, measured in calendar days. You have 30. You can extend it under section 20 on two specific grounds, but only with a written notice that lists the length, the reason, and the requester’s right to ask the Commissioner to review. A fee estimate of $100 or more pauses the clock until the 50% deposit is paid under Regulation 823, s. 7(1); a fee estimate under $100 does not pause the clock. A third-party notice under section 21(1) must itself be issued within your original 30 days (or any valid section 20 extension), after which the statute gives you up to 20 more days for representations and a further 10 days to decide. If you miss the deadline without an extension or third-party notice, section 22(4) deems you to have refused access on the last day the notice should have been given, and the requester can appeal that deemed refusal under section 39.

1. When does the 30-day clock start?

Section 19 of MFIPPA says: “A head shall, subject to sections 20, 21 and 45, within thirty days after the request is received, give written notice to the person who made the request as to whether or not access to the record or a part of it will be given.”

The clock therefore starts on the day the request is “received.” In practice, that is the first day on which all three elements of section 17(1) are satisfied:

The request is in writing, directed to the institution that has custody or control of the record, and specifies that it is being made under MFIPPA.
The request provides sufficient detail to let an experienced employee, on reasonable effort, identify the record.
The applicable fee prescribed by regulation is paid at the time of the request.

A request that is missing any of those elements has not yet been “received” in a form that starts the section 19 clock. If the request lacks sufficient detail, section 17(2) obliges you to tell the requester and offer help reformulating it. Section 17(4) then requires you to give the requester a schedule of the dates on which the request is “deemed to have been received again.” The administrative rule that the Ontario FOI Manual, chapter 6 applies to these provisions is: “The clock does not start until the request is clarified with the requester.” If the requester refiles or clarifies on a later date, the 30-day clock runs from that later date.

Calendar days, not business days — with one rollover rule. MFIPPA uses “thirty days” without qualification. Ontario’s Legislation Act, 2006, section 89(3) tells you how to count: “A reference to a number of days between two events excludes the day on which the first event happens and includes the day on which the second event happens.” In Ontario FOI practice this is expressed as: the day the request is received is “day zero,” and you start counting from the next calendar day. Weekends are counted as days.

Two rollover rules apply at the end of the count. Section 89(1) of the Legislation Act says: “Time limits that would otherwise expire on a holiday are extended to include the next day that is not a holiday.” Section 89(2) adds: “Time limits for registering or filing documents or for doing anything else that expire on a day when the place for doing so is not open during its regular hours of business are extended to include the next day the place is open during its regular hours of business.” Together, those two rules are why the Ontario FOI Manual states that if day 30 lands on a Saturday, Sunday, or statutory holiday, the deadline rolls to the next business day of the institution.

2. What your decision letter must say

Your section 19 letter is the written notice “as to whether or not access to the record or a part of it will be given.” Where access is to be given, section 19(b) also requires the head to give the person access to the record and, if necessary, cause it to be produced — but that provision can lawfully follow the decision notice later, for example while a fee-estimate deposit is being paid or while a third-party appeal window runs.

If access is being refused in whole or in part, section 22(1)(b) sets out the mandatory contents of the refusal notice. The notice must state:

the specific provision of the Act under which access is refused,
the reason that provision applies to the record,
the name and position of the person responsible for making the decision, and
that the person who made the request may appeal to the Commissioner for a review of the decision.

If there is no responsive record, section 22(1)(a) requires the notice to state that there is no such record and that the requester may appeal the question of whether such a record exists. If you refuse under section 21(7) after a third-party notice process, section 22(3) sets out the content of that notice in parallel terms.

If you are extending under section 20, or issuing a third-party notice under section 21, additional content is required — see sections 3 and 4 below.

3. Extensions under section 20 — two grounds, written notice, reviewable

Section 20(1) allows a head to extend the 30-day time limit on two grounds only:

(a) Volume. The request is for a large number of records, or necessitates a search through a large number of records, and meeting the 30-day limit would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the institution.
(b) Consultations. Consultations with a person outside the institution are necessary to comply with the request and cannot reasonably be completed within the 30-day limit.

There is no third ground. A backlog in the clerk’s office, staff vacations, or the requester being difficult are not grounds for a section 20 extension.

Section 20(2) sets out what the written notice of extension must contain. All three items are mandatory:

The length of the extension. A specific end date, not “approximately 60 days” or “as soon as reasonably possible.”
The reason for the extension. Framed in the language of subsection (1) — volume, consultation, or both — with enough factual detail that the requester and the IPC can assess reasonableness.
Notice of the right to ask the Commissioner to review. Missing this line is a common reason extensions get overturned on appeal.

The length of the extension must itself be “reasonable in the circumstances.” There is no statutory ceiling, but the IPC has reduced lengthy extensions on appeal where the institution’s evidence of volume or consultation demands did not justify the time claimed. A useful example is IPC Order MO-3353 (City of Toronto, August 30, 2016) (Appeal MA15-338): the city initially extended a media request on Scarborough LRT and subway records by nine months under section 20(1)(a), then sought a further extension of at least one year. The adjudicator reduced the extension to four months and reduced the accompanying search fee estimate from $1,755 to $1,485. The documented best practice — per the Ontario FOI Manual, chapter 6 — is to frame the extension length against specific search steps, staff availability, and named external consultations, and to revisit the estimate if the scope narrows later.

4. Third-party notice under section 21 — a parallel timeline

If the record may contain third-party business information caught by section 10(1), or personal information whose disclosure might be an unjustified invasion of privacy under section 14(1)(f), section 21(1) requires the head to give written notice to the affected third party before granting access. Section 21(2) sets out what the notice must contain — a statement of the head’s intent to disclose, a description of the contents of the record that relate to the affected person, and a statement that the person may make representations within 20 days under section 21(5).

When the notice must be issued. Section 21(3) is strict: “The notice referred to in subsection (1) shall be given within thirty days after the request for access is received or, if there has been an extension of a time limit under subsection 20(1), within that extended time limit.” You cannot use section 21 to avoid section 19 — the third-party notice itself has to go out inside your original or extended window.

What happens after the notice.

Under section 21(4), the head must also give the requester written notice of delay setting out that disclosure may affect another party, that the other party is being given an opportunity to make representations, and that the head will decide within 10 days after the expiry of the representation period whether to disclose.
Under section 21(5), the affected person has 20 days after the notice to make representations about why disclosure should not occur. Section 21(5.1) allows an extension of this period where the time limit creates a barrier under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005.
Section 21(7) requires the head to decide whether to disclose, and to give written notice of the decision to both the affected person and the requester, within 10 days after the expiry of the representation period.
Under section 21(8)(a), the affected person has 30 days after that decision notice to appeal to the Commissioner.
Under section 21(9), if the head decides to disclose and the third party does not appeal, the record is given to the requester within 30 days after the section 21(7) notice — unless an appeal is filed first.

Add that up: the statute gives you up to 30 days to issue the section 21(1) notice (or your extended time under section 20), then 20 days for the affected person to make representations, then 10 days to decide. The Ontario FOI Manual, chapter 6 summarises the operational effect as: “Clock continues, but request due date changes to be 30 days after the notice is issued.” The Manual’s “30 days after the notice” is the statutory combination of the 20-day representation window in section 21(5) and the 10-day decision window in section 21(7).

In practice, many section 21 files also use a section 20 extension where outside consultation or volume separately justify it. But a section 21 notice alone is a powerful timing lever, because the post-notice sequence flows directly from the statute.

5. Fee estimates and the clock — section 45 and Regulation 823

If the cost of responding is estimated to be over $25, section 45(3) requires the head to give the requester a reasonable estimate of the amount payable before giving access. The prescribed application fee under section 17(1)(c) — which Regulation 823, section 5.2 sets at $5 — is what triggers the request being “received” at all. Once that $5 is paid and the request is otherwise complete, the clock is running.

What happens next depends on whether the fee estimate is under or over $100. Regulation 823, section 7(1) says: “If a head gives a person an estimate of an amount payable under the Act and the estimate is $100 or more, the head may require the person to pay a deposit equal to 50 per cent of the estimate before the head takes any further steps to respond to the request.”

The Ontario FOI Manual, chapter 6 translates this into two operational rules:

Fee estimate under $100. No deposit is required. The clock does not stop. You have the same 30 days (subject to any section 20 extension) to issue your decision.
Fee estimate of $100 or more. The clock stops on the date the fee estimate is issued. The clock restarts on the date the 50% deposit is received. The institution has the remaining days of its 30-day window to complete. For example, if you issue a fee estimate on day 10, you have 20 days left to issue a final decision after the deposit arrives.

If your office has been operating on the assumption that any fee estimate stops the clock regardless of amount, or that no fee estimate ever stops the clock, one of those positions is wrong. The $100 threshold is the dividing line.

6. What happens if you miss the 30 days — deemed refusal

MFIPPA is explicit about this. Section 22(4), headed “Deemed refusal,” provides: “A head who fails to give the notice required under section 19 or subsection 21(7) concerning a record shall be deemed to have given notice of refusal to give access to the record on the last day of the period during which notice should have been given.”

Two consequences follow.

First, a deemed refusal is an appealable decision. Section 39(1) gives a requester who has made a request under section 17(1) the right to appeal “any decision of a head under this Act” to the Commissioner, and section 39(2) sets the 30-day appeal window from the notice of the decision appealed against. The Ontario FOI Manual, chapter 6 confirms the point: “A requester can appeal a deemed refusal to the IPC.”

Second, the institution still has to respond to both the original request and the appeal, which is more work than responding on time would have been. Many deemed-refusal appeals are resolved at mediation once the institution issues the late decision, but at the cost of staff time, IPC attention, and a record of non-compliance that a future requester or journalist can find.

7. A checklist for clerks and FOI coordinators

Before you close the file on a request received today:

Day 1. Confirm the request is in writing, directed to your institution, under MFIPPA, with sufficient detail to identify the record, and the $5 application fee is paid. Date-stamp and log. If any element is missing, contact the requester under section 17(2) rather than starting the clock.
Day 2–5. Identify custodians. If your institution does not have custody or control, forward the request under section 18(2) within 15 days. If another institution has a “greater interest” under section 18(3)–(4) — typically because the record was originally produced for that institution — transfer the request (and, if necessary, the record) to that institution within 15 days. A forwarded or transferred request is deemed under section 18(5) to have been made to the new institution on the original date.
Day 5–10. Scope the search. If you already anticipate a section 20 volume or consultation extension, draft the extension notice now rather than on day 29.
Day 10–20. Conduct the search. Identify any third-party interests triggering a section 21(1) notice.
Day 20–30. Finalize your section 19 decision letter. If refusing in whole or in part, confirm the notice meets section 22(1): specific provision, reason it applies, name and position of decision-maker, appeal right.
If extending: issue the section 20(2) notice before day 30, with length, reason, and review right.
If third-party notice: issue the section 21(1) notice (with contents required by section 21(2)) within your original 30 days or extended time under section 20, give the requester the parallel notice of delay under section 21(4), and allow the 20-day representation period under section 21(5) before deciding under section 21(7).

The bottom line

MFIPPA’s 30-day clock is simple in principle and nuanced at the edges. The things that trip small municipalities up are not the 30-day number itself — they are the letters. A section 19 decision, a section 20 extension, and a section 21 third-party notice each have specific statutory contents, and missing any of them is reviewable at the IPC. Writing them well on day 1 is how clerks avoid being the respondent on day 90.