Full Comment

Karen Selick: The CRA vs. Canadian men

It appears that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has recently
established a policy of ripping off divorced or separated men on the
flimsiest of pretexts. Within the past month, two of my legal clients
have had their spousal support deductions disallowed, despite having
filed copies of the documents (court order or separation agreement)
proving that they have to pay.

They've both received letters from CRA bureaucrats saying they must
provide signed receipts from their estranged wives. Fat chance. The
wives have no obligation to provide receipts. Many women in these
circumstances would withhold receipts either as a bargaining tactic to
exact some other concession, or from sheer malice.

The CRA's presumption that Canadian men routinely violate court orders
by failing to pay, then compound their problems by committing tax
fraud, seems a tad unwarranted to me.

One man attempted to prove his entitlement by filing a copy of his
wife's tax return, obtained through litigation, showing that she had
reported as income exactly the same amount he was claiming as a
deduction. Not good enough, wrote the CRA: We demand signed receipts.
The CRA's letters, although signed by two different bureaucrats, were
clearly form letters, so I suspect these two cases are merely the tip
of the iceberg.

I phoned the CRA and spoke to a "pre-assessment review officer." She
told me that it was within an officer's discretion to accept other
evidence of support having been paid, without insisting that a man
approach a hostile wife for receipts, and that she herself would have
accepted the copy of the wife's tax return. I suspected that her
apparent reasonableness may have arisen because she was talking to an
irate lawyer, so I pressed on, asking why the CRA would not, on its
own initiative, simply compare the two tax returns and allow the
husband's deduction so long as the wife had reported the same amount
of income.

Oh no, she said, that would violate the privacy laws. If they allowed
the man's deduction so easily, that would be tantamount to spilling
some confidential information that the wife had provided on her
return.

My mind boggled. The CRA would choose to overtax a man by thousands of
dollars rather than have him infer, from the fact that his deduction

was allowed, that his wife had complied with the Income Tax Act and
reported the money he already knew he had given her.

Could anyone really believe that this is what the Privacy Act
requires? What nonsense. Men wouldn't necessarily assume that the CRA
had cross-checked their wives' returns. They'd just assume the
deduction was allowed because they're legally entitled to it.

The Privacy Act and its private sector counterpart, the Personal
Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), now loom
up unexpectedly and absurdly in many situations, I've observed. Few
people know what they really require, so they've become a bogeyman,
lurking ominously in the background, waiting to trip up some
insufficiently vigilant flunky. It's like being a kid again, worrying
that Santa's always watching and will know if you'd been bad or good.
When in doubt, don't stick your neck out by saying anything about
anything, no matter how absurd and inconvenient the consequences may
be to anyone else.

Here's another example: Last year, I spent nine hours at a hospital
emergency ward with a relative, who ultimately died there following a
stroke. Days later, I wrote a letter praising the three doctors and
one nurse who had attended her for their diligence and compassion. I
didn't know their names but asked the hospital to pass my letter on to
them. Astonishingly, the hospital replied that doing so would violate
the privacy laws, unless the deceased's executor consented. Huh? I was
there. I watched them doing their jobs. They discussed things with me.
I observed their competence and kindness. I wanted them to know that.
How on Earth could it violate anybody's "privacy" for the hospital to
pass along my letter?

Aah, PIPEDA -- I've pondered this farce before. Every divorce lawyer
in the country collects and uses personal information about their
clients' spouses. We couldn't do our jobs otherwise. Theoretically,
PIPEDA says we're supposed to seek the opposing party's consent to
collecting and using information about their incomes, their adultery,
their alcoholism, their bankruptcies, etc. Never yet has another
lawyer contacted a client of mine seeking consent, so I assume my
colleagues are as mystified as I am over how we're supposed to comply.
Legislation like this, applied in the ridiculous way in which it is so
often applied, undermines respect for the law. And the law could sure
stand a little respect these days.

k...@karenselick.com
-Karen Selick is a lawyer in Belleville, Ont.

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