$25 fee to prove she’s alive? ‘Over my dead body,’ Chilliwack woman retorts
CHILLIWACK — Constance Herrington is alive, again.
After being accidentally killed — on paper, at least — in February, the 78-year-old grandmother has rejoined the land of the living of the federal government.
Herrington returned home from a Family Day excursion in Bellingham, Wash., to open her mail and learn the government thought she was dead.
A notice mailed to “the estate of Constance Herrington” served notice that the government was clawing back GST/ HST tax-credit funds paid out since the Chilliwack woman’s supposed death.
Herrington, of course, is very much alive and kicking.
“I thought it was a joke,” Herrington said. It was no joke, though. As she set about trying to resurrect herself, the retired B.C. Gaming investigator found the problem was even worse than a missing GST cheque.
Well-versed in the intricacies of government bureaucracy, Herrington visited her bank, where she discovered she hadn’t received money owed to her from Old Age Pension and the Canada Pension Plan.
Herrington figured the problem had reached Vital Statistics, the agency that keeps track of who’s dead and who’s alive. But she was angered when she was told that the agency wanted a $25 fee to investigate whether she was actually alive.
“I said over my dead body I’m going to pay $25 to Vital Statistics,” said Herrington.
An official at Vital Statistics said staff, acting on Herrington’s behalf, phoned their federal counterparts and were able to start the process of fixing the misunderstanding.
Herrington also wondered: “When did I die?’
The answer depended on who you ask. Dec. 6 is when the provincial GST/ HST rebate authorities thought Herrington drew her last breath. But CPP considered Herrington deceased as of Dec. 15.
Herrington wrote letters to Vital Statistics and the other agencies who believed she was dead, and appeared on TV to talk about her case.
She said a death certificate should be required to end pension payments when a person dies and that her case illustrates the difficulties in navigating the tentacles of Ottawa’s bureaucracy.
“There should be a complaints centre — a main head of the octopus that you could go to,” she said.
On Friday, though, it became clear that Herrington had managed to find that head.
“I have been resurrected as of this morning!” she told the local newspaper.
She later said a government representative had apologized profusely for the error and explained that the death of another woman with the same name had led to the problem. Somebody at CPP had pushed “the wrong button,” and while the mix-up had been caught, a presumed solution hadn’t been acted on.
Herrington’s pension cheques are on the way and she’s been promised that officials are looking to remedy the holes in the system.