The Office of the B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) has been ordered to try a second time to craft restrictions on a Summerland man's Freedom of Information (FOI) abilities after a Justice ruled the previous limits were too broad and undefined.

Brad Besler had filed for the judicial review shortly after the adjudicator made their ruling in 2024, which found that Besler had made "systematic" and "excessively broad" FOI requests, with the 10 most recent requiring the review of more than 46,000 pages of documents. 

The District of Summerland, having dealt with 79 FOI requests from Besler, including 18 made by family members, had gone to the OIPC to ask for relief. 

The adjudicator's order cut those most recent requests and further restricted Besler and his family from filing more than one request at a time for the next three years. 

In addition to seeking to have that restriction overturned because Besler's family had been denied their right to procedural fairness by not being included in the adjudication process, Besler also claimed in his appeal that the adjudicator was biased and did not fairly consider the evidence presented by both sides.

Justice Briana Hardwick's April 9 decision found the order from the adjudicator to be too broad, specifically in its restriction for Besler's family from making requests on his behalf. 

"There is no definition of who the Petitioner鈥檚 'family' is," Hardwick wrote. "Does that include an aunt or uncle of the Petitioner? Does it include a non鈥慴iological relative who is married to someone in the Petitioner鈥檚 immediate family? These are but two mere representative examples that serve to illustrate the point that arises from the imprecise language in the remedy crafted by the Adjudicator."

Hardwick also agreed that there had been a failure to provide notice to Besler's family, despite her own finding that their rights were minimally impacted. 

"In this context, however, the requests submitted by the Petitioner鈥檚 'family' are better viewed as an extension of the Petitioner鈥檚 own actions, and the corresponding restriction a limitation on the Petitioner鈥檚 own rights," Hardwick wrote. "As such, the restriction on the Petitioner鈥檚 'family' to submit requests on his behalf can only be said, as I indicated above, to tangentially implicate their interests."

The claims that the adjudicator was biased in their decision were rejected completely by the Justice. Hardwick wrote that she found those claims to be "completely without merit," adding the adjudicator was not biased in their decision. 

"Simply put, adjudicators and judges are entitled to prefer the submissions of one party to the submissions of another," Hardwick wrote. 

The rest of the order, including vacating the requests from Besler that spurred the municipality into action in the first place, was not specifically touched on in the Justice's decision. 

The OIPC was ordered to either reconsider its order as a whole, after giving notice to Besler's family, or to just reconsider the portion around the family. 

The case was only one of several that Besler has had before the courts in recent months.

Besler filed a claim of defamation against Summerland's mayor in March 2025, and that same month won a decision to continue pursuing claims of malicious prosecution resulting from a 2019 criminal investigation.