Income Tax

We are now approaching, in Canada, income tax time. You can tell that we are getting close because all of the major news media are starting to talk about RRSPs and other ways of managing your money. For those of us who have little to manage - it really is so much easier. You buy (carefully) what you need to buy; looking for clever investments for money we don't have is pretty far down on the list of things to do.

For as long as I can remember the income tax folks (now called Revenue Canada) have been separate from all other government departments. Information that they received cannot be shared, without a very specific court order, with any other government department. In the past I could file my income tax clearly stating that my income was from some illegal activity (e.g. selling bath tub gin) and that information would not be passed on to the police. Civil servants who released any information were guilty of breaking the law.

At some point last June that law changed. Revenue Canada is now allowed to "hand (to) the police possible evidence of serious crime — including terrorist activity — that it happens to come across while reviewing taxpayer files" (CBC). They can do so without a warrant and on the suspicion that perhaps a crime has been committed. Please note that they don't need evidence that a crime was committed but rather just the suspicion that a crime may have been committed. There appears to be no limits as to what crimes are included but according to the CBC "The new provisions apply to offences including breaking and entering, vehicle theft, arson, corruption and kidnapping. They also allow authorities to pass along information about any offence with a minimum prison term, or one with a maximum sentence of 14 years" (ibid). Now it may seem highly unlikely that a car thief is going to report any income he or she makes from selling stolen cars, but the fact is that once again private information is no longer private. Once again the Harper government have imposed upon the Canadian people their agenda that at the very least appears to suggest that we can't be trusted. Once again the Harper government has stood firm on the platform that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and only they (the Conservatives) can stop it by having tougher laws. There appears to be no other logic for why the law was changed.

If there was a logic - we will never know. This change in law was buried in the government's last budget omnibus bill. Either no one knew the change was buried in the hundreds of pages of the all inclusive bill or it appeared to be so irrelevant that no one thought it was worth fighting about in the limited time that the government gave to discuss 2014 omnibus budget implementation bill. Regardless it was never debated in Parliament.

One has to wonder why some Minster of the Crown thought that we needed to change the law. What problem was it designed to fix? Of more concern to me is when (not whether) will the government start to tell the civil servants that they must report things they think could be crimes? When will it become the policy of Revenue Canada to release their files to the police so that they (the police) can wander through my personal information. We know if that happens, the police will also automatically release that personal information to the Americans and others who are involved in the international collection of personal data.

Another slippery path that we have been put on - without our knowledge or consent.