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All I want is my life back, I want what they caused me to lose

CRA’s latest application for dismissal, which alleged that Mr. Leroux’s statute of limitations had run out, was thrown out this week.

The episode’s next chapter is set to unfold in September. In a Prince George courtroom, Mr. Leroux will attempt to prove that the tax agency is guilty of “misfeasance in public office” and seek restitution.

“All I want is my life back, I want what they caused me to lose,” he said.

Not just Mr. Leroux’s fate, but the fate of all Canadian taxpayers may be affected by the upcoming case, according to Laurence Armstrong, Mr. Leroux’s Victoria, B.C.-based tax lawyer.

Currently, he says, the CRA does not acknowledge that it has any legal “duty” to taxpayers, and thus cannot be held negligent.

It will establish whether the CRA has a duty to taxpayers, whose lives they can potentially destroy

“It will establish whether the CRA has a duty to taxpayers, whose lives they can potentially destroy,” he said.

In the early 1990s, right around the time of Mr. Leroux’s 50th birthday, he purchased a massive plot of property in the shadow of Jasper National Park and developed it into an RV Park (Irvin’s Park and Campground) and an 11-lot subdivision.

An audit came in 1996, during which Mr. Leroux says CRA employees came to his home and, after he had stepped out for an errand, cleared out two filing cabinets’ worth of business and personal documents without permission.

In December, “one of the employees informed him that a significant portion of his documents had been shredded,” reads a 2010 B.C. Supreme Court summary of Mr. Leroux’s plea. “Other documents necessary for the audit of Mr. Leroux’s affairs had been lost.”