CRA effort to inform women in shelters of tax benefits to be probed

OTTAWA — Canada’s taxpayers’ advocate says the Canada Revenue Agency isn’t doing a good enough job ensuring women living in shelters with their children are aware of and receiving benefit cheques.

Taxpayers’ ombudsman Sherra Profit launched a systemic examination Friday to study what kind of effort the CRA has made to reach out to shelters regarding benefits such as the Canada Child Benefit or the working income tax benefit.

Profit said she has received several complaints from shelters about the lack of information from the CRA, but also a call from Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier last fall concerned about concerns she was hearing.

Lebouthillier asked the ombudsman’s office, which operates at arm’s length from the CRA, to look into the matter.

Profit launched a preliminary examination which included conversations with staff at about 25 shelters across Canada, which indicated a possible problem.

Only a handful of the shelters said they had had any contact from the CRA, and in those cases, there was no information provided on how to help clients apply for and receive benefits. The information shelter workers could provide to clients was largely based on their own experience as parents or through their own efforts to research what benefits are available.

The Canada Child Benefit alone is worth up to $6,400 for a child under six each year.

“Access to information about benefits is crucial, especially when somebody is in a situation where they’re needing use of the shelter,” Profit said in an interview with the Canadian Press.

“They’re in that situation where they don’t have access to the resources they normally would have access to, especially if the information is just online. We really want to make sure that those people who are in a vulnerable situation already are not made further vulnerable by not being able to access the information the CRA has available to help them get those benefits.”