Federal Court judge orders the Canada Revenue Agency to reconsider jumbled ruling — using a different employee
Article content
A judge in Vancouver has harshly criticized a Canada Revenue Agency official for a decision ordering repayment of COVID-era benefits that was a rambling “stream of consciousness,” unintelligible to both the woman ordered to repay and the court.
Article content
Tripti Mathur had asked the Federal Court to rule on whether reasons informing her why she was being ordered to pay back the money received in 2020 under the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act were reasonable, according to the judgment by Justice John Norris of the Federal Court.
Article content
Article content
Story continues below
Article content
“Reasons do not need to be perfect, but they must be intelligible,” Norris wrote in his ruling.
Article content
Sunrise
Article content
He cited the official’s decision, including its spelling, grammatical and spacing errors:
Article content
“The benefit recipient is not eligible for CERB (1-7) due to not meeting 1k income criteria and did had hours reduced because of Covid . BR has dividend incme in 2020, For dividend income, Dividends Other $47,150in 2020, not able to validate with he docs sent in any frequency/pattern of dividends, From the docs sent in CIBC Retail Operations Bank book Reconstruction report from Dec 2019 to Feb 2021, no transaction highlighted , not able to visualize which transactions are related to dividends.”
Article content
It goes on for several similar sentences before concluding:
Article content
“Moreover, BR had no schedules/track hours to see the stoppage of work or reduction in hours due to COVID, so BR do not meet the eligibility condition for did not stop working or had hours reduced because of COVID, as this is documents driven review. CERB ( 1-7), periods will remain ineligible and reason code will be changed to Secondary Review.”
Article content
Story continues below
Article content
Persons receiving reasons “must be able to understand them,” said Norris. And the judge reviewing them should be able to follow the line of reasoning made by the decision maker, he added.
Article content
Read More
Article content
“To the extent that the reasons are even intelligible, which is hardly at all, the decision maker’s stream of consciousness approach completely obscures any line of analysis that could reasonably have supported the conclusion that the applicant was not eligible for the benefits,” Norris concluded.
Article content
The reasons “fail to exhibit the requisite degree of justification, intelligibility and transparency for the decision to be reasonable.”
Article content
He sent the matter back to the Revenue Agency to be reconsidered — by a different employee.
Article content
Article content
