The Taxpayers’ Ombudsman has released a report on the CRA access to information program (“ATIP”). The report reads in part as follows:
Canadians have experienced a decline in the CRA’s compliance with the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act since 2005. The number of new requests between the years 2005 and 2010 remained relatively constant. However, the number of pages that needed to be reviewed in responding to a request more than tripled during that time. Since the number of employees assigned to this task has only increased moderately, it is no surprise that the CRA’s rate of deemed refusal Footnote 1 increased drastically. To compound the problem, the backlog of requests also grew rapidly. Not surprisingly, there has been an increase in the number of complaints to the Office of the Information Commissioner about the CRA’s delays in replying to requests for information. The Office of the Information Commissioner report for 2009-2010 stated that the CRA had the most new complaints among all government entities. We note that 32.5% of these complaints were from one requestor. The CRA received a rating of below standard compliance from the Office of the Information Commissioner for 2008-2009.
It’s no wonder that we’re hearing more lately about the benefits of making informal requests for information and the CRA’s increased emphasis on honouring those requests (see my post here). Some agents of the CRA continue to refuse to honour these requests, perhaps because they fear prosecution for releasing confidential information (see section 241 of the Income Tax Act (Canada)).
