The CRA was well versed in its own predatory practices over the years, pulling one stunt after another. Some were sneaky and underhanded; others were shrewd and duplicitous. Each one may have been carefully calculated to limit access to the DTC.

None was as deceitful as the PowerPoint (PPT) presentation sent by Minister Lebouthillier’s office in June 2017 to all MPs, ostensibly to clarify the eligibility criteria for the DTC. Unless they were familiar with the legislation, they would not have known that the PPT guideline, imposing an inflexible 90 per cent threshold to define “all or substantially all of the time,” was at odds with the parliamentary and legislative intent of the Income Tax Act. Instead of being helpful, as far as enabling MPs to provide assistance to their constituents, the PPT guidelines represented a new low by a government determined to maintain strict controls on dollars allocated to the DTC program.

My MP Murray Rankin wasn’t falling for a cheap trick designed to deceive all 338 elected representatives in the House of Commons.  A law professor at the University of Victoria before entering politics, he agreed that the CRA had overstepped its mandate. In a rebuke of the false missive from Minister Lebouthillier’s office, his terse message to her, in a letter dated June 30, 2017, emphasized that imposing the inflexible 90 per cent threshold in the PPT, “is not supported by your own policies nor the Income Tax Act nor Tax Court of Canada rulings.”