Joanne Nemec Osmond, 46, is in front of the Tax Agency of Canada’s tax center in St. Louis. John’s. He says the federal government’s Phoenix payment system has turned his life upside down. (Ariana Kelland / CBC)
A St. John’s woman says she has lost everything, her home, her livelihood and stability, after years of problems with the federal government’s famous Phoenix payment system, and has not yet received a penny. in compensation.
Joanne Nemec Osmond, 46, started at the Canada Tax Agency in 2006 as a contract worker. Each year, she was fired only to be called up the following season, hoping that one day she would become a permanent employee.
In 2017, he was offered a better paid position, but it had a crippling price that would destroy his home, his career and his finances.
“They owe me cold, hard money that I earned for working, but I will never get my credit back, ever [get back] my home that I had to leave to my children, the change of life, ”Nemec Osmond said.
“They’ve taken years out of my life.”
Nemec Osmond is one of more than 200,000 federal government employees estimated to have been unpaid for long periods of time, paid less than expected, or overpaid since the Phoenix system was established.
The federal government hired the problem of IBM’s payment system in 2011 to replace its aging system. It went online in 2016 and since then there have been countless failures, costing more than $ 2.4 billion in April. A replacement system is being worked on.
$ 0 checks
Shortly after the Phoenix payment system went online, Nemec Osmond said he began seeing deductions on his pay stubs in varying amounts, from tens of dollars to hundreds. When she called the compensation department to ask why, she said they couldn’t tell her on what dates she was overpaid, only that she was there and as a result had money recovered.
After taking a well-paid job in 2017, the problem got worse and he started receiving paychecks for $ 0.
Stressed and unable to cope with his mortgage payments, Nemec Osmond applied for employment insurance that same year.
He said he was once again despised by the flawed system of the federal government.
“Phoenix issued me an employment record that lost six months of my job and said I didn’t qualify for IS,” Nemec Osmond said.
“After my check went to zero and I said I didn’t qualify, I became a squeaky wheel.”
He later obtained IE after the intervention of his Member of Parliament’s assistant, the Liberal Seamus O’Regan.
Nemec Osmond received a T4 in the mail this year indicating that he earned more than $ 1,200 working for CRA in 2021. However, he says his employment contract ended in 2018. (CBC)
Nemec Osmond returned to work months later, but was still receiving blank checks and no one seemed to know how to help.
Then, after 12 years at work, CRA eliminated his job.
“I received a letter from the tax center telling me that it did not meet the required production rates that we are supposed to review. At that time I think it was four and a half files per hour that it exceeded every two years,” he said.
“I think he was crushed. At the time he didn’t know where to turn for help.”
They took me. They must take the last drops of blood.- Joanne Nemec Osmond
In 2019, after defaulting on his mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the home where he had raised his children. Separated from her husband, she and her two daughters now live in sheltered housing. He owes more than $ 33,000 to First National, his lender, due to “losses incurred as a result of [her] by default”.
“[We] I built the house in 96, got married in 97 and took home my two daughters, born in 2004 and 2010, to this house, ”he said.
“That’s where I had the piece on the wall measuring its heights as they grew and the memories. And it’s heartbreaking, and I still haven’t gotten over it.”
He is afraid of tax time
But it didn’t end there.
Since his contract ended in 2018, Nemec Osmond has received two T4s from the CRA: one in 2019 and another in 2021, inaccurately claiming that he had labor income in those years.
In February 2020, the CRA sent him a letter stating $ 6,926.38 in overpayments. A few months later, he sent another letter saying the balance “was not accurate” and that in fact he owed $ 5,925.88. CBC News has reviewed the documentation.
The agency is now recovering that balance by taking it from Nemec Osmond’s annual tax refunds.
Nemec Osmond and her husband built the house of their dreams in 1996. In 2019, after failing to make the mortgage payments, the bank seized the house. He now lives in a sheltered housing. (Submitted by Joanne Nemec Osmond)
“That was pretty overwhelming because I really needed those funds,” he said, adding that days later he received another T4 in the mail in which he said he earned $ 1,800 in CRA labor income.
“They’re taking me. They’ve taken me. They’re about to take the last drops of blood.”
Nemec Osmond does not believe that the federal government can ever accurately calculate what it owes him because of the complication that the mistakes were.
And no matter how much, he said he will never return what was lost.
A public servant holds a poster asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resolve issues with the Phoenix payment system, during a protest in front of the Prime Minister’s and Privy Council office in Ottawa on October 12, 2017. (Justin Tang / The Canadian Press)
“I don’t think they could bring stability and security back to my kids’ lives. I can’t go down in front of my old house. I still dodge and I was never one for that,” Nemec Osmond said.
“But that has changed me and changed our whole family dynamic.”
The federal government promised to provide $ 2,500 in general damages to eligible employees and announced additional compensation in late 2021 for people like Nemec Osmond who suffered severe financial and personal hardship.
Nemec Osmond said he has not yet received compensation, but that he has received an email confirming that his claim for serious damages is being reviewed.
Launch the consultation, the union says
The union that represents many federal employees, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said tens of thousands of public sector workers are still affected by wage problems. It calls on the federal government to convene a national investigation.
Colleen Coffey, regional executive vice president of PSAC Atlantic, was not available for an interview prior to publication time. .
In a statement, Coffey said the backlog of Phoenix’s pay problems has grown during the pandemic, with a total of 137,000 cases beyond the normal workload this March, compared to 94,000 two years earlier.
“Furthermore, we know that the current payroll staff is simply not capable of processing high and complex volumes of payment transactions,” Coffey wrote.
“Working in compensation with a broken payment system is a difficult and stressful job, and this has caused problems with hiring and retention.”
PSAC members hold a protest in front of the offices of the Federal Department of Finance on Elgin Street in Ottawa on February 28, 2018. (Amanda Pfeffer / CBC)
Nemec Osmond said his attempts to contact his union were unsuccessful. Still, Coffey said the team responsible for Phoenix’s payment problems works daily with public sector workers to “understand how and why this happens to them.”
In a statement, Shared Services Canada said it is testing a new payroll and human resources program through “lessons learned” from Phoenix. A federal agency spokesman said it is “a human-focused, accessible, cloud-based human resources and payment solution.”
As of May 31, more than 96 per cent of the complaints received, 27,955, have been resolved, according to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. More than 1,600 of these claims have been for serious damages. About 800 of these claims have been resolved.
Public Services and Procurement Canada did not respond to CBC questions before the deadline.
“A lot of people think Phoenix is over. I didn’t choose to quit my job. I certainly didn’t choose to lose my home and move into sheltered housing,” Nemec Osmond said.
“It needs to be fixed. I need someone to fix it.”
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