No need to sign form in order to use relay service, says Canada Revenue Agency

By The Canadian Press

HALIFAX – The Canada Revenue Agency says people who are hearing impaired should never be asked to sign a third-party representative form to use a relay service – but a national advocacy group says it’s a recurring issue for the people it has counselled.

A Toronto man told The Canadian Press of his frustrations earlier this month in trying to communicate with the revenue agency using a relay operator, the modern successor to the teletypewriter.

The service uses a computer program to allow the hearing impaired to type out and read a conversation using an operator in the middle to translate text to voice and vice-versa.

Mitchell LaFrance said he’d been instructed to fill out and sign a “T1013 Authorizing or Cancelling a Representative” form which would designate the relay operator as his representative in dealings with the CRA.

LaFrance said he isn’t comfortable signing the authorization form because he said it allows anyone within the relay company to make changes to his account without his knowledge.

In a story published by the Canadian Press on Oct. 24, the CRA’s policy was incorrectly stated. The story stated a spokesperson had said that deaf people must sign the authorization form to address privacy issues around the involvement of a third party.

However, Mylene Croteau actually stated in an email that the T1013 form should never be sent to a person seeking to use a relay operator. She said a written letter of consent is sufficient.

“We don’t recommend using that form because that form is for a third party,” said Croteau in an email this week.

The letter must contain the taxpayer’s name, address, social insurance number, and the name of the telephone company that the taxpayer is authorizing to discuss their information during relay calls. It must be dated, signed, and sent to the client’s local tax office.

“Those are the guidelines we have, so that’s how normally they would approach this,” said Croteau.

However, LaFrance said it wasn’t until he had a “heated discussion” with a second CRA agent that he was told a letter would suffice.

And a representative of the Canadian Hearing Society said the organization’s front-line staff routinely hear similar stories.

“They have informed me that they are consistently informed that deaf clients are required to sign ‘T1013 Authorizing or Cancelling a Representative’ form when they use Bell Relay Services or a sign language interpreter to serve as their representative when making phone calls,” said Gary Malkowski via email.

Denise Watson-Jarigen of Winnipeg contacted The Canadian Press to share her experience of trying to deal with the CRA through a relay service – and being told to fill out T1013.

“Every time I called through relay service, I’d slam them with my rights and they’d say fill out the form,” she wrote.

Asked to shed some light on the situation, Croteau said the CRA cannot disclose any information about why individuals were being told to fill out the form rather than to provide a letter of consent, saying “reference information” used by the agency’s call centres is accurate.

“We cannot speak to what may have occurred during specific calls, as these calls are private and we cannot confirm what information may have been provided by the caller to the CRA, which would determine what information the CRA provided, or vice versa,” she said.

Croteau said the agency is open to complaints from the deaf community and will work to address any concerns.

“We are always interested in feedback from taxpayers, and will certainly reinforce the correct procedure when undertaking communications to the hearing impaired community,” she said.

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