adplus-dvertising
Connect with us

News

Woman mistakenly declared dead by Service Canada for almost a year demands answers – CBC.ca

Published

 on


At first, Teresa Shum and her husband, Mark, thought the situation was funny. The Markham, Ont., couple received a notice in February from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that one of Mark’s tax credits was declined due to his marital status being changed to widower.

“We were really taken by surprise,” Shum said. “I was like ‘I’m not dead, I’m right here.’ “

The humour quickly dissipated when they realized the situation couldn’t be fixed immediately and Shum, who is retired, would be missing out on certain benefits. She says they filed an appeal with the CRA right away, and her status was corrected there within about a month after three phone interviews to prove she was, in fact, alive.

However, the CRA sent her a letter directing her to contact Service Canada, where they said the incorrect update that she had died in October 2021 had originated. 

So in April, Shum set out to have the Service Canada mistake corrected. It would take her another five months of calls and visits to have the record officially changed.

Service Canada told CBC News in an emailed statement earlier this month that it had removed the date of death on Shum’s account as of Aug. 31. It said this incident is not a regular occurrence. 

But the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling for better service from agencies like Service Canada, saying taxpayers like Shum have often complained of long wait times on the phone and in person. Meanwhile Shum is demanding answers about how this happened in the first place.

Long waits, passed from agent to agent

“How can anyone just change your data and tell you that you’re dead without a death certificate?” Shum wondered when she started reaching out to Service Canada. 

“Of course when you call [Service Canada], every call is a three hour wait,” she said. “No one knew what was going on so I decided to go into Service Canada.” 

Shum says when she visited a Service Canada office in Markham in April, she waited in line for hours before she was interviewed by an agent who told her to submit several forms to different departments of Service Canada including the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Social Insurance Number (SIN). 

“Then I was told it would take six to eight weeks to have the record fixed.”

But at the end of the eight weeks, the agent called Shum to inform her they had missed a form and she had to come back to Service Canada and go through the process all over again. This time, she recalled, the agent said there would be an “urgent” tag on her case so that she wouldn’t have to wait another six to eight weeks.

Every agent said the same thing, ‘Someone is taking care of it.’​​​​​– Teresa Shum, on her experience with Service Canada

When she was still unable to access her Service Canada account in July and hadn’t heard back from anybody, Shum tried calling again. She said she spoke to multiple agents throughout the month.

“Every agent said the same thing, ‘Someone is taking care of it,’ ” she said, noting that some of the agents said they had no idea what was going on with her case because they weren’t involved in previous conversations with agents.

Shum said during one of those calls, an agent told her Immigration Canada was taking care of her situation.

“I said ‘I’m a Canadian citizen.’ … She didn’t even check my account before she answered me.”

During this period of time, Shum, who is retired, was not able to apply for her CPP or Old Age Security Benefits.

She also reached out to her Member of Parliament for Markham—Stouffville, Helena Jaczek, who Shum said also tried to help her speed up the process.

Calls for better service: Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Jay Goldberg, Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says they’ve seen many instances of poor service from the CRA and Service Canada including long wait times and difficulty getting answers from agents.

“These organizations need to remember we’re the taxpayers, we’re the ones in charge. They’re serving us, not the other way around,” Goldberg said.

He describes the mistake with Shum’s file as a “huge error” and says Service Canada should have been working around the clock to fix it.

Jay Goldberg, Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, says it’s not appropriate that the taxpayer is expected to spend their time rectifying an error like a case of mistaken death. (Submitted by Jay Goldberg)

“To hear this example where we have this poor woman who’s been declared dead who’s not, waiting hours and hours to try to get some attention from Service Canada, it’s unacceptable.”

David Rotfleisch, a Toronto tax lawyer, did not work on Shum’s case specifically, but he said there should be one person designated within the system to help deal with incidents like this.

“The simple solution is to have someone dealing with this one particular issue, somebody co-ordinating at the federal level.”

Service Canada responds 

In a statement to CBC News, Service Canada said in December 2021, a date of death was added to Shum’s file indicating her as deceased as of Oct. 15, 2021. Service Canada said after Shum’s visit in April, it took steps to remove the date of death from the system but the process was not completed correctly.

“On August 31, 2022, Service Canada completed the process correctly and removed the date of death on her account,” the statement said, adding Shum can now access her account to apply for her CPP retirement benefits. 

Service Canada also stated that this instance was unusual, and it’s still investigating how the error occurred and why the change wasn’t processed correctly back in April.

A sign reading "Service Canada."
In a statement to CBC News, Service Canada said cases like Shum’s are unusual, and that it is still investigating how the error occurred and why the change wasn’t processed correctly the first time. (Christian Milette/Radio-Canada)

The CRA said the cause of the error can vary.

“It could be human error, a miscommunication from another government department, or, most often, a mistake made when a return is filed on behalf of a deceased person with an incorrect SIN number,” the tax agency said in a statement.

For its part, the CRA said it had already implemented a number of safeguards in the system prior to Shum’s case, to lower the likelihood of this error from occurring. Those include revising forms and procedures to make it less likely that a taxpayer can make an error in their tax filing, and collaborating with other government departments to validate records.

“While the issue still occurs, the prevalence is notably reducing,” the statement read.

Shum says she deserves to know why and how this happened. She feels like her security was breached, because her data was changed without her knowing about it.

“The information was sent to every single department, fast. But when I want to correct it, it takes me almost a year to do it,” she said.

“The inconvenience, the frustration, the time and the effort, it’s not good.”

Adblock test (Why?)

728x90x4

Source link

Continue Reading

News

Australia plans a social media ban for children under 16

Published

 on

 

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Australian government announced on Thursday what it described as world-leading legislation that would institute an age limit of 16 years for children to start using social media, and hold platforms responsible for ensuring compliance.

“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

The legislation will be introduced in Parliament during its final two weeks in session this year, which begin on Nov. 18. The age limit would take effect 12 months after the law is passed, Albanese told reporters.

The platforms including X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook would need to use that year to work out how to exclude Australian children younger than 16.

“I’ve spoken to thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles. They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online,” Albanese said.

The proposal comes as governments around the world are wrestling with how to supervise young people’s use of technologies like smartphones and social media.

Social media platforms would be penalized for breaching the age limit, but under-age children and their parents would not.

“The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access. The onus won’t be on parents or young people,” Albanese said.

Antigone Davis, head of safety at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the company would respect any age limitations the government wants to introduce.

“However, what’s missing is a deeper discussion on how we implement protections, otherwise we risk making ourselves feel better, like we have taken action, but teens and parents will not find themselves in a better place,” Davis said in a statement.

She added that stronger tools in app stores and operating systems for parents to control what apps their children can use would be a “simple and effective solution.”

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. TikTok declined to comment.

The Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the digital industry in Australia, described the age limit as a “20th Century response to 21st Century challenges.”

“Rather than blocking access through bans, we need to take a balanced approach to create age-appropriate spaces, build digital literacy and protect young people from online harm,” DIGI managing director Sunita Bose said in a statement.

More than 140 Australian and international academics with expertise in fields related to technology and child welfare signed an open letter to Albanese last month opposing a social media age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”

Jackie Hallan, a director at the youth mental health service ReachOut, opposed the ban. She said 73% of young people across Australia accessing mental health support did so through social media.

“We’re uncomfortable with the ban. We think young people are likely to circumvent a ban and our concern is that it really drives the behavior underground and then if things go wrong, young people are less likely to get support from parents and carers because they’re worried about getting in trouble,” Hallan said.

Child psychologist Philip Tam said a minimum age of 12 or 13 would have been more enforceable.

“My real fear honestly is that the problem of social media will simply be driven underground,” Tam said.

Australian National University lawyer Associate Prof. Faith Gordon feared separating children from there platforms could create pressures within families.

Albanese said there would be exclusions and exemptions in circumstances such as a need to continue access to educational services.

But parental consent would not entitle a child under 16 to access social media.

Earlier this year, the government began a trial of age-restriciton technologies. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the online watchdog that will police compliance, will use the results of that trial to provide platforms with guidance on what reasonable steps they can take.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the year-long lead-in would ensure the age limit could be implemented in a “very practical way.”

“There does need to be enhanced penalties to ensure compliance,” Rowland said.

“Every company that operates in Australia, whether domiciled here or otherwise, is expected and must comply with Australian law or face the consequences,” she added.

The main opposition party has given in-principle support for an age limit at 16.

Opposition lawmaker Paul Fletcher said the platforms already had the technology to enforce such an age ban.

“It’s not really a technical viability question, it’s a question of their readiness to do it and will they incur the cost to do it,” Fletcher told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“The platforms say: ’It’s all too hard, we can’t do it, Australia will become a backwater, it won’t possibly work.’ But if you have well-drafted legislation and you stick to your guns, you can get the outcomes,” Fletcher added.

Source link

Continue Reading

News

A tiny grain of nuclear fuel is pulled from ruined Japanese nuclear plant, in a step toward cleanup

Published

 on

 

TOKYO (AP) — A robot that has spent months inside the ruins of a nuclear reactor at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi plant delivered a tiny sample of melted nuclear fuel on Thursday, in what plant officials said was a step toward beginning the cleanup of hundreds of tons of melted fuel debris.

The sample, the size of a grain of rice, was placed into a secure container, marking the end of the mission, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which manages the plant. It is being transported to a glove box for size and weight measurements before being sent to outside laboratories for detailed analyses over the coming months.

Plant chief Akira Ono has said it will provide key data to plan a decommissioning strategy, develop necessary technology and robots and learn how the accident had developed.

The first sample alone is not enough and additional small-scale sampling missions will be necessary in order to obtain more data, TEPCO spokesperson Kenichi Takahara told reporters Thursday. “It may take time, but we will steadily tackle decommissioning,” Takahara said.

Despite multiple probes in the years since the 2011 disaster that wrecked the. plant and forced thousands of nearby residents to leave their homes, much about the site’s highly radioactive interior remains a mystery.

The sample, the first to be retrieved from inside a reactor, was significantly less radioactive than expected. Officials had been concerned that it might be too radioactive to be safely tested even with heavy protective gear, and set an upper limit for removal out of the reactor. The sample came in well under the limit.

That’s led some to question whether the robot extracted the nuclear fuel it was looking for from an area in which previous probes have detected much higher levels of radioactive contamination, but TEPCO officials insist they believe the sample is melted fuel.

The extendable robot, nicknamed Telesco, first began its mission August with a plan for a two-week round trip, after previous missions had been delayed since 2021. But progress was suspended twice due to mishaps — the first involving an assembly error that took nearly three weeks to fix, and the second a camera failure.

On Oct. 30, it clipped a sample weighting less than 3 grams (.01 ounces) from the surface of a mound of melted fuel debris sitting on the bottom of the primary containment vessel of the Unit 2 reactor, TEPCO said.

Three days later, the robot returned to an enclosed container, as workers in full hazmat gear slowly pulled it out.

On Thursday, the gravel, whose radioactivity earlier this week recorded far below the upper limit set for its environmental and health safety, was placed into a safe container for removal out of the compartment.

The sample return marks the first time the melted fuel is retrieved out of the containment vessel.

Fukushima Daiichi lost its key cooling systems during a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, causing meltdowns in its three reactors. An estimated 880 tons of fatally radioactive melted fuel remains in them.

The government and TEPCO have set a 30-to-40-year target to finish the cleanup by 2051, which experts say is overly optimistic and should be updated. Some say it would take for a century or longer.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said there have been some delays but “there will be no impact on the entire decommissioning process.”

No specific plans for the full removal of the fuel debris or its final disposal have been decided.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

News

Strong typhoon threatens northern Philippine region still recovering from back-to-back storms

Published

 on

 

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A strong typhoon was forecast to hit the northern Philippines on Thursday, prompting a new round of evacuations in a region still recovering from back-to-back storms a few weeks ago.

Typhoon Yinxing is the 13th to batter the disaster-prone Southeast Asian nation this season.

“I really pity our people but all of them are tough,” Gov. Marilou Cayco of the province of Batanes said by telephone. Her province was ravaged by recent destructive storms and is expected to be affected by Yinxing’s fierce wind and rain.

Tens of thousands of villagers were returning to emergency shelters and disaster-response teams were again put on alert in Cagayan and other northern provinces near the expected path of Yinxing. The typhoon was located about 175 kilometers (109 miles) east of Aparri town in Cagayan province on Thursday morning.

The slow-moving typhoon, locally named Marce, was packing sustained winds of up to 165 kilometers (102 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 205 kph (127 mph) and was forecast to hit or come very near to the coast of Cagayan and outlying islands later Thursday.

The coast guard, army, air force and police were put on alert. Inter-island ferries and cargo services and domestic flights were suspended in northern provinces.

Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey hit the northern Philippines in recent weeks, leaving at least 151 people dead and affecting nearly 9 million others. More than 14 billion pesos ($241 million) worth of rice, corn and other crops and infrastructure were damaged.

The deaths and destruction from the storms prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare a day of national mourning on Monday when he visited the worst-hit province of Batangas, south of the capital, Manila. At least 61 people perished in the coastal province.

Trami dumped one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, including in Batangas.

“We want to avoid the loss of lives due to calamities,” Marcos said in Talisay town in Batangas, where he brought key Cabinet members to reassure storm victims of rapid government help. “Storms nowadays are more intense, extensive and powerful.”

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused ships to run aground and smash into houses in the central Philippines.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending