A Federal Court judge in Vancouver has sharply criticized a Canada Revenue Agency official for issuing a decision that was a rambling "stream of consciousness," making it unintelligible to both the woman ordered to repay COVID-era benefits and the court itself.
Justice John Norris of the Federal Court ordered the CRA to reconsider its ruling requiring Tripti Mathur to repay money received under the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act in 2020. The judge directed that a different employee handle the new review.
Unintelligible Reasons
In his ruling, Norris emphasized that reasons do not need to be perfect but must be intelligible. He cited the official's decision, which contained spelling, grammatical, and spacing errors, as failing this standard.
The decision read in part: "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."
It continued with similar sentences before concluding: "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."
Court's Criticism
Norris stated that persons receiving reasons must be able to understand them, and a judge reviewing them should be able to follow the decision maker's line of reasoning. He concluded that the reasons were hardly intelligible and that the "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."
The judge found that the reasons failed to exhibit the requisite degree of justification, intelligibility, and transparency for the decision to be reasonable. As a result, he sent the matter back to the CRA for reconsideration by a different employee.
