CRA Fired Employees for Sharing Private Taxpayer Info in Unauthorized Facebook Chat: Federal Records

A sign outside the Canada Revenue Agency office in Ottawa on May 10, 2021. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has confirmed that it fired some employees for previously sharing private taxpayer information in an unauthorized Facebook Messenger group chat, according to recently released federal records.

The CRA said in an Inquiry of Ministry tabled in the Commons on June 9 that an undisclosed number of employees were “disciplined up to, and including, termination of employment” as a result of sharing taxpayer information outside of a secure portal, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

The revenue agency released the information in response to an order paper question filed by Conservative MP Rachel Thomas on April 24 asking how many times the government had requested companies and social platforms “to remove, edit, or alter information in the media” since January 2016.

The CRA said in the Inquiry that in June 2022, its manager of public affairs had requested that Facebook remove the chat containing sensitive taxpayer information from its servers, but added that it could not confirm if the social media giant complied with its request.

The update comes after the CRA said in a separate Inquiry of Ministry tabled earlier this year in response to an order paper question by Conservative MP Dean Allison that an undisclosed number of the agency’s employees had used the Facebook chat group for “a private conversation mentioning taxpayer information” between May and June 2022 before one of the group’s administrators deleted it on June 7.

Disciplinary Measures

The CRA said it notified all taxpayers who had been affected by the unauthorized conversation and offered them “credit protection services, as well as additional actions they could take to prevent fraud, and contact the CRA if they found it to be necessary.”

The agency told The Epoch Times in an email that it notified a total of three taxpayers affected by the Facebook chat. It added that all employees involved in the chat were “retrained on Unauthorized Access and use of Social Media.”

“The most extreme cases of misconduct attract the most severe measures of discipline up to and including termination of employment,” a CRA spokesperson wrote on March 30.

However, the agency would not disclose how many employees had been disciplined or fired as a result of the incident, saying that the number was “very low” and therefore “would result in the serious possibility that one or more individuals could be identified” if they disclosed the exact number of employees involved.

“The disclosure of such personal information would constitute a breach of the privacy of those individuals unless the disclosure is otherwise authorized by the Privacy Act,” said the spokesperson.