The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) terminated 177 employees last year due to security breaches, according to recently disclosed records. Blacklock's Reporter says the CRA did not specify the reasons for each dismissal, but past terminations have often involved unauthorized access to tax files.“All 177 were revocations of reliability status,” the CRA stated in an Inquiry Of Ministry tabled in the House of Commons. The figures were detailed at the request of Conservative MP Karen Vecchio (Elgin-Middlesex, Ont.), who inquired, “How many individuals have had their government security clearances revoked for cause and not as a result of retirement or resignation?”The CRA had the highest number of security revocations among federal departments and agencies. All other federal employers combined dismissed only 14 individuals for security breaches, with none involving espionage or actions on behalf of a foreign government, according to the Inquiry.Approximately two-thirds of the CRA's 62,000 employees have access to computerized tax files. Labour arbitrators have consistently upheld that unauthorized access to tax files is a fireable offence.“Employee misconduct does occur,” the CRA’s human resources office acknowledged in a 2018 Overview Of Discipline Reports.“The Canadian public’s confidence and trust in the Agency is the cornerstone of Canada’s tax system. To maintain this trust the Agency has put into place a solid Integrity Framework.”In 2014, the CRA began tracking IT records to detect unauthorized access to tax returns. Records indicated that most breaches involved employees viewing tax files of family members, ex-spouses, and co-workers.The Integrity Framework was initiated after the Privacy Commissioner criticized the CRA in 2013 for “disturbing” laxity in protecting millions of tax files. A special audit at the time identified “marked weaknesses,” including an incomplete accounting of breaches.Records obtained by Blacklock's in 2013 revealed that nearly a quarter of all disciplinary actions against CRA employees, or 21%, involved unauthorized access to tax files. Over a six-year period, only three instances of criminally suspicious misconduct were found, including one employee who altered a return to fabricate a $14,000 refund and another who rewrote tax files for five relatives to generate refund checks deposited in his own bank account.One of the most egregious cases, disclosed in 2016, involved a single employee who browsed through 1,264 taxpayers’ files using keyword searches.In a separate 2018 case at the Ottawa Tax Services Office, an employee was found to have read files on 30 taxpayers without permission and browsed 634 other files using various search criteria. Tax file information includes details of income, debts, medical expenses, overseas investments, and other personal data.
