Canada’s new taxpayers’ watchdog is familiar with the struggles of the underdog.

Paul Dubé, the country’s new Taxpayers’ Ombudsman, is not a chartered accountant, but a criminal defence lawyer who has fought to defend his client’s rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“I think I bring a fresh new perspective,” says Dubé, 48, whose lifelong passion has been to help people get access to justice.

“I see that as a perfect training ground for this job,” Dubé says. “My mandate is to deal with issues of fairness.”

To some extent, Dubé is switching gears to deal with service-related complaints and act as an advisor to the Canada Revenue Agency as well as the Minister of National Revenue.

The fully bilingual Calgary native, whose three-year term as ombudsman was announced Feb. 21, launched his legal career in New Brunswick’s Restigouche River Valley. He worked in his father’s law practice in Dalhousie, a forestry town with a population of 5,000.

The then-green lawyer, still “wet behind the ears,” got a quick trial by fire: a few days after he was called to the bar, Dubé’s father assigned him the job of making an argument at the provincial Court of Appeal in Fredericton.

Since then, Dubé has made Charter arguments while dealing with homicide, narcotics, cigarette smuggling and other cases involving improper interrogation methods, illegal seizures conducted without search warrants, and inadequate paperwork needed for police wiretaps.

This Charter experience — along with his extensive mediation background — will help him as he works to uphold the service-related sections of the new Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, introduced by the federal government last year.

The primary purpose of the ombudsman is to investigate taxpayers complaints about service, and Dubé says he’s confident he’ll be able to have an impact, noting he’ll be issuing annual reports to Parliament as well as ad hoc reports to the public.

“The light of day is going to shine on any problems that we see,” Dubé says.

“I can make recommendations to the minister and to CRA directly that they change policy and procedure,” he says. “I can issue ad hoc reports and advise the minister as I see fit.”

Among other things, the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights states taxpayers have the right to: pay no more than what’s required by law; a formal review of a file and appeal to the courts; complete, accurate, clear and timely information; not pay taxes in dispute before an impartial review; lodge a service complaint and relief from penalties and interest because of extraordinary circumstances.

He has been asked to look for patterns among complaints, which began to arrive at the new office almost immediately after the announcement of the appointment.

The CRA handles 25 million individual returns per year, including estates and trusts. There are another 1.6 million corporate returns, Dubé says.

So even if there is a 99.9% satisfaction rate, there could be about 25,000 complaints about CRA service.

Although Dubé will be starting with a staff of 18 to handle the workload, he’s projecting the number of staff will eventually need to increase to more than 30.

“When I heard about this job, I got really excited about it,” says Dubé, who had been working since June, 2006 as a lawyer for the Ottawa Criminal Law Office, which is a Public Defender Pilot Project of Legal Aid Ontario.

He gave up his private practice in New Brunswick to move to Ottawa to be closer to his five-year-old daughter, who lives in Montreal with her mother, Dubé’s ex-wife, who is coincidentally, a chartered management accountant.

In New Brunswick, Dubé had served for 12 years as president of the Restigouche Barristers Society. He was a member of the New Brunswick Legal Aid Committee for a decade. He also taught at the New Brunswick Bar Admission course for several years.

Dubé’s legal experience is not limited to criminal matters. He served as alternate chairperson on the New Brunswick Labour and Employment Boards, where he gained experience in making rulings after hearing both sides of a dispute.

A political science graduate of the University of Ottawa, Dubé earned law degrees from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the University of Windsor. Awards include the Cassels Brock and Blackwell Centennial Prize, as well as the Canadian Bar Association Pro-Bono Award in 2003.

@page_break@Dube’s appointment has been welcomed by taxpayer advocates, as well as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, whose members include more than 105,000 small and medium-sized businesses.

“As of today, taxpayers, including businesses, will benefit from increased transparency, accountability and fairness within the CRA,” Garth Whyte, the federation’s executive vice-president, said in a statement, although he said the ombudsman needs real powers to do his job effectively.

“Too often, taxpayers feel that the deck is stacked against them when dealing with tax authorities; our members have told us time and again that this is a problem. So having an ombudsman operating at arm’s length from CRA will be a great help,” Whyte says.

The creation of the ombudsman’s office was also applauded by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, a self-regulatory organization.

“Anything that improves the dialogue and communication between taxpayers and the government is a good thing,” says Kevin Dancey, president and CEO of the CICA. IE