Taxpayers' Ombudsman is interviewed by Adrian Harewood, host of All in a Day on CBC Radio One 91.5 FM - Transcript

Adrian Harewood (CBO-FM): Well, I could introduce my next guest, but he does a pretty good job at that himself. Let me just click on his website and find the audio link.

Audio link: Hello. I'm Paul Dubé, Canada's first taxpayers' ombudsman. I often get asked what is a taxpayers' ombudsman. Essentially, my job is to see Canadians get the professional service and fair treatment they are entitled to from the CRA, the Canada Revenue Agency.

Adrian Harewood: Paul Dubé became the taxpayers' ombudsman a little over a year ago. It's a brand new office, but he's already received 3,776 complaints about Canada's tax collector. That averages out to over ten complaints a day. This morning, Paul Dubé released his first report, an interim report, to the federal government, and Paul Dubé joins us in our studio. Paul, welcome.

Paul Dubé (Taxpayers' Ombudsman): Thank you. Thank you.

Adrian Harewood: Paul, what are the most common complaints you receive about the CRA?

Paul Dubé: You know, Adrian, we deal with complaints that run the gamut, actually, from I'd say at the bottom scale ranging from rude behaviour on the phone from CRA employees escalating up to situations in which perhaps taxpayers have difficulty reaching the CRA over the telephones or through the call centres. Then if they do get through, sometimes they get misleading information or incorrect or inconsistent information leading up to probably the most serious cases are when taxpayers complain about an inconsistent or an unfair application of policies or procedures. That's pretty much the type of things that we deal with.

Adrian Harewood: So it really runs the gamut.

Paul Dubé: It does run the gamut. What we deal with are service and fairness issues. As I said in the introduction on the website, my job is to see that Canadians get the professional service and fair treatment they're entitled to. A lot of people don't know it yet, but since 2007, there has been in Canada a Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Those fifteen rights include eight service rights, and that's what my office was created to deal with.

Adrian Harewood: What's the most memorable complaint that you've received?

Paul Dubé: Well, I think one of them was a very significant case we dealt with, a lady who was a single mother, who relied on child tax benefits to make ends meet, had her benefits suspended by the CRA, and they had asked her to provide documentary proof that her children were actually born in Canada. So she did that. She actually provided a letter from the doctor who delivered her babies, and the Agency was not satisfied with that proof. So this dispute went on for months, and she was on the verge of losing her home. She couldn't pay her mortgage. She filed a complaint with us. Within two weeks she had a reimbursement for $38,000.

Adrian Harewood: Uh huh.

Paul Dubé: So… I have to say, to put this in a bit of context, the Canada Revenue Agency receives 26 million individual tax returns every year, another 1.6 million corporate filings. Even if they had a 99.9% satisfaction rate we'd be looking at 26,000 potential complaints. So we're there to bridge that gap. We're there to help people who have fallen through the cracks, and we look at these service complaints or fairness complaints in an independent, impartial manner, and now somebody… if I may…

Adrian Harewood: Yeah, sure.

Paul Dubé: The difference is is that before you used to have to complain to the CRA about the CRA. Now if you don't get satisfaction after having gone through the CRA service complaints procedure, there is somebody who's independent, impartial outside the CRA that can review those issues.

Adrian Harewood: I was going to ask that, because the CRA already has an internal review system. Is an ombudsman, an outside ombudsman, really necessary?

Paul Dubé: Well, I think so, and I think the proof is in my first report. It's an interim report, and I talk about the difference we are making in the lives of a lot of taxpayers across the country already. I cite several examples in my report, and I think that's what the main message of my interim report is that we are making a difference in that relationship between the Canada Revenue Agency and taxpayers.

Adrian Harewood: Can you give some more examples?

Paul Dubé: Sure. Again, on the fairness side of things, we had a gentleman, a retired gentleman, who was suffering from an inoperable brain tumour, and he had a fire in his house, so he lost a lot of his tax documents. Given what was going on in his life, not surprisingly he didn't file his taxes for a few years, and the Agency, as they have the power to do, imposed penalties and interests on this gentleman, and when he applied under the Income Tax Act for relief, there is a provision in the Act that says for exceptional circumstances you can apply for relief to have penalties and interests waived or cancelled. He did that, and his application, which was split up in two, the GST portion went to one tax centre, and the income tax went to another, and what came back were two diametrically opposed results. One centre said, “Yes, those are exceptional circumstances. We will waive the penalties and interest,” and another centre, based on the same evidence, the same facts, said, “No, you don't meet the criteria.” We got involved; we made our position known, our assessment of the case, and the Agency in its wisdom saw fit to remove the penalties and interests.

Adrian Harewood: Clearly a lot of taxpayers appreciate the work that you do. You act as an advocate for them, but I would imagine that the folks at CRA probably aren't as enthusiastic about your existence, or are they…

Paul Dubé: Well…

Adrian Harewood: Are they… how would you describe your relationship with Canada Revenue…

Paul Dubé: Two points. I have to correct you somewhat. I am not a taxpayer advocate. I am an impartial, independent officer. So when a complaint comes in if we think the Agency got it right, we say so, and a lot of times we do find that despite a complaint having been filed from a taxpayer, there actually was pretty good service, sometimes exemplary service. Sometimes they go the extra mile. But we have found lapses in service, and we have found several issues… several examples in which we cite in the report where there were lapses in service and unfair treatment, and so what we're trying to do at the end of the day is help the CRA improve its service, and by offering an outside perspective, a different vision of things, we're helping them do that, and I can tell you I'm travelling the country on an outreach tour. I'm talking to Canadian taxpayers, representatives, associations, but CRA employees as well, and a lot of those employees say, you know, “We're trying to do the best work we can.”

Adrian Harewood: Well, how would you describe your relationship with officials of the CRA? You said that you have…

Paul Dubé: There I have…

Adrian Harewood: … been talking with some of the staff members. What about the administrators?

Paul Dubé: Well, I allude to that in my report. There are growing pains. There are growing pains, and we've… we've sensed a certain reticence or reluctance on the part of the Agency sometimes to maybe grasp what I'm about, because you have to remember: the CRA has never had…

Adrian Harewood: Yeah.

Paul Dubé: … an outside person overseeing what they do and talking about how they treat taxpayers.

Adrian Harewood: Well, let me quote from the report, because you write here that “there has been a reluctance to follow some of our recommendations for apologies, and there does not yet appear to be universal understanding or acceptance within the CRA of the role of the ombudsman.”

Paul Dubé: That's correct. That's correct, and so I attribute it to growing pains. I think it's normal. I think this is, as you correctly pointed out, this is a new venture, and I think it's going to take some time for an agency as big, you know, 45,000 employees, for all of those employees to get a sense of what I'm about, what my role is. This is not a witch hunt, and quite often I end up validating what they do.

Adrian Harewood: Does the CRA work?

Paul Dubé: Yes, yes, generally it does a pretty good job. It delivers good service. It tries as hard as it can to be fair, and most of the time it does that. I'm learning a lot about the CRA in these days, and it's consulted by other countries around the world in the way it does things.

Adrian Harewood: What can it do better?

Paul Dubé: I think that if I had to pick one overarching theme that I've noticed in my dealings with the CRA and taxpayers is communication.

Adrian Harewood: Uh huh.

Paul Dubé: Not surprisingly, I think that sometimes it could better communicate its message to taxpayers, better explain how it arrived at solut-… or conclusions and assist taxpayers probably in communicating with them a little bit more easily and getting the taxpayers' point of view across as well, and we're providing that bridge.

Adrian Harewood: We were taking a look at your website this afternoon, and you spent a lot of time on the website explaining what you do. Obviously you want Canadians to be informed, but do you think Canadians are aware of your office, of what you're trying to accomplish?

Paul Dubé: Well, that's why I'm travelling the country. It's to inform… obviously it is a new venture, and this is a new office, so I deliberately kept a low profile for the first six or seven months. I use the analogy of building a hotel. When I got there we didn't have beds in all the rooms, and we didn't have the staff we needed.

Adrian Harewood: Do you have room service now?

Paul Dubé: We do; we do.

Adrian Harewood: OK. Well, that's good…

Paul Dubé: And I have a brilliant team around me that I'm very proud of, and they're doing a lot of good work, so we're going across the country, myself and my director of operations, and we're getting that message out there. We're raising the awareness of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and the role of my office, but at the same time we're consulting with Canadians and their representative associations, and we're learning what the issues are in the relationship between the CRA and Canadian taxpayers.

Adrian Harewood: What's your website? Do you give it to people?

Paul Dubé: www.taxpayersrights.gc.ca.

Adrian Harewood: Paul Dubé, it's great to meet you. Thanks for joining us this afternoon.

Paul Dubé: Pleasure.

Adrian Harewood: Paul Dubé is the taxpayers' ombudsman.