Wrong T4s accidentally mailed to former staffers of MPs

OTTAWA – The House of Commons has launched an internal probe in the wake of an "administrative error" that resulted in hundreds of personal income tax forms mailed to the wrong addresses, Canwest News Service has learned.

The glitch affected 697 former staffers of members of Parliament in 2009 who received a T4 tax form last month that belonged to somebody else.

Government House leader Jay Hill said the mix up likely occurred when lists of former employees were incorrectly merged with addresses prior to the mail out by the human resources department.

"It was an inadvertent human error," said Hill. "I often wonder when people sit and stare at these computer screens all day why there aren’t a lot more errors like this."

The former employees received two envelopes in the mail. The outside envelope had the correct address with someone else’s name, and an inside envelope was sealed with a T4 that had the correct address and information, but sent to the wrong person.

"It was very unfortunate," said Hill, who is also one of the Conservative representatives on the Commons Board of Internal Economy, which governs the financial and administrative matters of the House and its staff. "But I think the House acted extremely quickly, tried to make the best of it and correct it, and as I say there will be a review."

The Commons was able to identify the people who received the wrong forms and sent them the correct forms along with stamped envelopes to return the ones they had received. Hill added that the ongoing review would also ensure that corrective measures are implemented to prevent the mistake from happening again.

The personal information on the T4 forms includes social insurance numbers, employee earnings and other personal information that could be used to apply for credit and steal someone’s identity. As a result, the Commons has also set up a special hotline and consulted credit agencies about monitoring for the risk of identity theft to the employees who were affected by the mix up.

But Liberal MP Marcel Proulx, who also sits on the Commons board, said these are precautionary measures.

"It’s not exactly the same thing as if you were forwarding wrong T4 slips to people held in a penitentiary," said Proulx. "Basically you’re not dealing with dishonest people (who work for MPs). But identity theft can happen anywhere, anytime to anybody. So you never know and that’s why the House was so careful once they realized what had happened."

Proulx said former employees had returned 139 of the forms by Monday in the morning, while an undetermined amount of people had called in to say they had destroyed the forms they had received in the mail.

"The House is doing a complete survey of this today by phone calls," Proulx said.

A spokeswoman for Jennifer Stoddart, the federal privacy commissioner, said that an investigation by her office would be beyond the scope of her mandate.

Although the commissioner is an advocate for privacy rights of Canadians in federal institutions and the private sector, the existing privacy legislation in Canada does not cover the House of Commons, said Valerie Lawton, a senior communications adviser for the commissioner.