These subcategories reflect a review of major themes in story content. Taxation includes: Personal requests via the ATIA and Privacy Act, Taxation, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), Governmental Spending, Payments to Individuals, Expense Claims, Business Subsidies, Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.
Taxation
wdt_ID | Details | Author | Date of Publication | Media Outlet | Title | Category Name | Story summary |
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1 | More details | Zuhair Kashmeri | 17/08/1984 | Globe and Mail | Security probe; Memos trace course of RCMP's investigation of career civil servant | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | Jack Gold was a senior corporate rulings officer with Revenue Canada. The details of his activity at an anti-Kissinger demonstration of Oct. 21, 1980, would be added to the RCMP dossier on him. The informant had already reported on other aspects of Gold's private life - ominous to the security service, routine to thousands of other Canadians. He had taken part in other peace demonstrations, and a demonstration against U.S. President Reagan. Gold's story is told in a mass of internal government memos and reports that began flowing between the security service, Revenue Canada and the office of Solicitor-General Robert Kaplan. A majority of the documents were obtained by Gold through the ATIA. |
2 | More details | Peter Calamai | Montreal Gazette | {**} Judge orders file release | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | Ottawa has been ordered to make public 200 pages of secret immigration files in a precedent-setting court decision that marks the first legal victory for the information ombudsman. Federal Court Associate Chief Justice James Jerome harshly criticized bureaucrats and, indirectly, a cabinet minister for trying to thwart the spirit of open government enshrined in the 1983 access law. "This will open the doors," predicted Gerald Goldstein, a Vancouver lawyer who has been battling Immigration Department secrecy for more than two years. The secret files were used by immigration officials who denied permanent residence to a Filipino woman by rejecting the sponsorship of her husband, a Canadian citizen. Goldstein expects the documents show that immigration officials used unreliable material from the Philippines concerning a previous marriage by the woman. He applied for the documents on the husband's behalf after the wife waived any privacy barriers. | |
3 | More details | Iain Hunter | 12/02/1987 | Ottawa Citizen | MPs ask Speaker to call hearing into firing of Immigration officer | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | An immigration officer was fired for giving information to MPs, even though last August a departmental committee recommended only a 30-day suspension. And in a hearing related to the case, Associate Chief Justice James Jerome of the Federal Court was told that no disciplinary action had been recommended. John Quigley, a district enforcement officer with Immigration in Toronto, was defended in the Commons by MPs of all parties. They charged their privileges had been violated because a public servant had been fired for talking to them… Two weeks ago, in response to an application under the ATIA, Quigley received documents revealing that an investigating committee had made recommendations to the department's director-general for Ontario. The recommendations were not disclosed. |
4 | More details | Pamela Fayerman | 18/10/1989 | Vancouver Sun | RCMP handling of Richmond case subject of probe | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | The RCMP's new public complaints commission will investigate a fisherman's contention that the Richmond detachment mishandled his complaints. The director of complaints for the independent commission established last year by Parliament, said from Ottawa the agency will investigate the way the RCMP disposed of complaints by Jim McFarlane. McFarlane initially asked Richmond RCMP to investigate why he was prevented from visiting the Commons offices of various MPs between 1984 and 1986 while applying for a job with the fisheries department. In 1986, he learned that information stating he was a threat to security and should be denied access to the building was placed in a security file at the House of Commons. He obtained documents through the ATIA showing he'd been labelled by police as a complainer and mentally ill. |
5 | More details | Stewart Bell | 01/09/1990 | Vancouver Sun | SFU Flashbacks: Former Simon Fraser University scholars and '60s radicals reflect on their time at the institution now celebrating its 25th year | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | After Jim Harding graduated from SFU in 1970, he realized that his reputation had preceeded him. Armed with his PhD in political science, Harding set out to find a job teaching or doing research, but no one would hire him. Harding says he was blacklisted because he was a founder of Students for a Democratic University, the SFU group formed in 1967 "largely by people who had been active in community work and who had returned to university and felt the university needed to be the focus of reform." Harding has filed complaints with the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and hired a lawyer to try and obtain the blacklist through the ATIA. |
6 | More details | Kim Bolan | 18/11/1991 | Vancouver Sun | {*} Canadian prisoners caught in political crossfire: Family wins political allies to lobby minister | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | Both her Liberal and NDP critics want External Affairs Minister Barbara McDougall to explain why she won't ask the Brazilian government to expel two Canadians serving lengthy sentences there. The parents of Christine Lamont outlined to them a number of serious irregularities and injustices in the case. McDougall said her department wrote a legal report that recommended against the expulsion request and which the department would not initially release to the family because it was classified "protected." But after the Lamonts filed a complaint under the ATIA, they obtained a copy of the document. It says an expulsion order is the same as clemency and there are no recent examples of the government asking a foreign government for clemency, a contention the NDP said is wrong. |
7 | More details | Dirk Meissner | 09/10/1993 | Times Colonist (Victoria) | Paraplegic's lawyer awaits police answers | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | The lawyer for a Langford man rendered a paraplegic by RCMP gunfire said he wants to know if police were justified in their actions at a Millstream Road home. Two independent Mountie probes determined the RCMP's Emergency Response Team "acted properly" when officers opened fire on Henry Skrety, who was wielding a machete. Skrety's lawyer said police have yet to supply him with any information about the shooting or the results of the RCMP inquiries, which he needs to come to any conclusion about the actions of the ERT officers. He filed an ATIA application to examine police files on the case, he said, adding the government and RCMP both responded that the application is being processed |
8 | More details | Staff | 04/02/1994 | The Province (Vancouver) | Unlucky in love and law | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | Ursula Hecht lost her husband of 49 days. She lost the legal battle for more of his estate. She isn't giving up. She's going public. The million-dollar widow wants to make one thing clear. "I am not an evil woman." At stake are real estate, gold and other business interests worth anywhere from $32 million to well over $100 million. She has letters indicating someone prompted RCMP and Interpol investigations into her affairs in both Canada and Switzerland. The unusual allegations appear on documents obtained under the ATI Act. |
9 | More details | David Pugliese | 08/10/1994 | Ottawa Citizen | {*} A lonely battle | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | Four years ago, public servant Marlene O'Neil complained about harassment as a senior secretary. An independent investigator supported her allegations but she's been paying a steep price ever since. Her story, as told by Agriculture Canada documents released through the ATIA and the Privacy Act, is a journey through the bureaucratic looking glass. It's not uncommon for her to vomit in the waste paper basket when tension in the office gets too much. O'Neil's problem? She followed government rules and complained about harassment in the work place. She was shocked when a senior official in the office, started referring to her as a "tart," a name he regularly also called other women in the office. He came up behind her and another secretary and smacked his fist into his hand right behind their heads, while saying she needed "a good back-hand." |
10 | More details | Archie Rollo | 17/10/1994 | Vancouver Sun | Woman fighting double tragedy | PERSONAL REQUESTS via the ATIA and the PRIVACY ACT | The unsolved mystery of what happened to her pilot husband still haunts Mary Millar Ford 38 years after his Royal Canadian Air Force jet disappeared on a short training flight from Comox air base in 1956. She said the disappearance of her first husband James Millar has never left her mind and it was that fact that prompted her in 1987 to make a request under the ATI Act. What she learned, she says, astonished her and the family of Gerald Stubbs, the other pilot on the jet. Among the documents she received related to the inquiry was a brief memo from ``NDHQ Ottawa to RCC Victoria'' dated Nov. 2, 1974. |