Sask. ministry says it mailed more than 400 T4A tax slips to the wrong address

Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Advanced Education says 415 T4A tax slips were mistakenly sent to wrong addresses after errors with an electronic spreadsheet in February last year.

The ministry reported the incident to the office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner in May which then released an investigation report on Dec. 16.

According to the privacy commissioners final report, the incident affected 277 people, with some due to receive more than one T4A document.

At the time of the report’s publishing in December, the commissioner said 154 T4As belonging to 121 people were still missing.

The report says that an employee responsible for producing mailing labels made a mistake while working with an Excel spreadsheet that was used to print labels which then resulted in wrong addresses appearing on the labels. 

Included in the T4A documents sent to the wrong addresses were the names of individuals awarded grants, social insurance numbers and amounts of money received by grants throughout the 2023 tax year, the report says.

According to privacy commissioner Ronald Kruzeniski, the T4As were mailed out to the wrong addresses on Feb. 15, 2024.

The grants were mainly for students with a disability, needs for education-related services or equipment and special financial needs, according to the report.

Kruzeniski said in the report that the Ministry of Advanced Education took necessary steps to investigate the cause of the misdirected tax forms, locate where the forms were wrongfully sent and draw up a plan to prevent future similar incidents from occurring.

He also stated that those affected from the incident were not informed of the possible negative impacts they could experience or what steps affected people should take to possibly protect themselves from negative consequences of the incident.

Kruzeniski said in the report that steps such as credit card monitoring from the ministry should have been provided to the affected people because of the risks created from the incident and advised the ministry to provide credit monitoring to the 121 people still being affected by the incident at the time his incident report was released.

“Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Advanced Education is responsible for developing a skilled and educated workforce that meets the needs of the province’s labour market,” the province says on its website. “The ministry works with the private sector, educational institutions, and community organizations to develop, retain and attract skilled workers.”

The privacy commissioner’s full report into the incident can be read here.