P.E.I. potato farmers sue federal government over release of tax information

P.E.I. potato farmers sue federal government over release of tax information

PEI

A Prince Edward Island farm family is suing the federal government over how their income tax records were handled during an investigation into a 2016 fish kill.

Alex and Logan Docherty say Canada Revenue Agency breached privacy rules

CBC News

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Seed potato farmer Alex Docherty in a warehouse at Skye View Farms in Elmwood, P.E.I. (Shane Hennessey/CBC )

A Prince Edward Island farm family is suing the federal government over how their income tax records were handled.

Alex Docherty and his son Logan Docherty, as well as their Elmwood company Skye View Farms, were the subject of an environmental investigation after a 2016 fish kill in Clyde River.

It took years, but they won their case in court, with judges ruling in their favour three times along the way.

Now, the family has filed a lawsuit in Federal Court alleging that employees acting for the federal government broke the law when it comes to the handling of their personal and corporate tax information.

Named in the suit are the Attorney General of Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, and New Brunswick-based Environment Canada enforcement officer Fernand Comeau.

“The CRA has a privacy statement on its website,” Alex Docherty said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “It tells us to trust them, that they will keep our information secure, that we have a right to confidentiality.

More than 300 dead fish were collected from the Clyde River after the July 2016 rainstorm, which dumped about 70 millimetres of rain on the Docherty farm in the space of a few hours. (Krystalle Ramlakhan/CBC)

“I think that’s a lie. It turns out they hand over our information to government employees from other departments when they want to know how much we get paid — and that’s just wrong.”

2016 rainstorm started process

Two years after a torrential rain in July 2016, the Dochertys were charged with regulatory infractions under section 40(2)(b) of the Fisheries Act.

Farm chemicals they had applied to their potatoes on a dry day three days before the intense rainstorm, identified in the charges as “a deleterious substance,” had washed into nearby Clyde River, leading to the death of about 300 fish.

Separately, Alex Docherty was fined by the province in 2017 for having allowed his pesticide sprayer’s licence to expire.

Alex Docherty and wife, Valerie Docherty, outside court in Charlottetown after the farmer was acquitted on a Fisheries Act charge in July 2019. The judge ruled fisheries officials failed to get a search warrant before they went on his property after a fish kill on the Clyde River in the summer of 2016. (Brian Higgins/CBC)

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Federal Court seeks $450,000 in damages.

It says an employee for the Canada Revenue Agency shared three years of personal tax records for Alex and Logan Docherty, as well as three years of corporate records for their farm, with Comeau.

The lawsuit says the Environment and Climate Change Canada enforcement officer wanted the records so that the federal government would know how big a fine to ask for, if it were to win the case.

However, Canadian law prohibits sharing taxpayer information except in the case of criminal investigations.

The lawsuit points out that the infractions under the Fisheries Act were regulatory, not criminal — something lawyers for the federal government had themselves pointed out during the earlier court proceedings.

It’s been an eventful year for Skye View Farms. Here, Alex Docherty looks at one of his farm buildings that was destroyed by post-tropical storm Fiona. Early in the year, the Dochertys had to destroy truckloads of seed potatoes because of a continuing export ban due to potato wart. (Laura Meader/CBC)

“While arguing the appeal, counsel for the Attorney General of Canada argued that the Fisheries Act charges were regulatory in nature and were not to be treated akin to a criminal proceeding while responding to the plaintiffs’ Charter arguments, which were originally successfully argued at trial.”

With files from Brian Higgins

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