When the client is still on the phone with the CRA
By Alejandro Fiszman
On the afternoon of August 7, 2026, our client in Watton called the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) four times. The calls lasted seven, eight, sixteen and forty-eight minutes. In the last one, an agent told her something no one at the CRA had told her before: she should have gone to the Federal Court within 30 days. The CRA's own note of that call reads: "advised of the last option of judicial review even though 30days have elapsed" (Respondent's motion record, Exhibit K). By then, the 30 days were about three months gone.
That phone call is a moment we see so often it has become diagnostic. Weeks or months after a decision the CRA treats as final, the person is still on the phone with the CRA, being told to send more documents, or file a dispute, or wait. Often nobody mentions the Federal Court until the deadline to go there has passed.
In Watton v Canada (Attorney General) (Federal Court file 26-T-352, October 6, 2026), Justice Meaghan Conroy gave her more time. The letter refusing her a second review, the judge noted, was "entirely silent on any right to apply to the Federal Court for judicial review". It told her to contact the CRA by phone if she needed more information, and on her evidence "she did just that" (p 3). Watton is the latest of five orders in this story, and each later motion leaned on earlier ones.
How the deadlines work
A person who disagrees with a CRA eligibility decision can ask, within 30 days, for a second review by an officer who was not involved in the first (Yang v Canada (Attorney General), 2026 FC 1066, at paras 6, 15). If that review goes against them, or the CRA refuses to do one, they can ask the Federal Court to review that decision, a process called judicial review (para 16). They have 30 days after the decision "was first communicated" to do so (Federal Courts Act, s 18.1(2)).
Someone who misses that deadline can ask a judge for more time, called an extension. The judge looks at four things: whether the person kept intending to challenge the decision, whether the case is arguable, whether the delay harmed the government, and whether there is a reasonable explanation for it (Canada (Attorney General) v Larkman, 2012 FCA 204, at para 61). Over all of it sits one principle: "The overriding consideration is that the interests of justice be served" (para 62).
One order at a time
The first order came quietly. In Lexchin v Canada (Attorney General) (Federal Court file T-4613-25, December 17, 2025), the government filed nothing in response (para 2). For months after his decision, the applicant kept communicating with the CRA and, on his evidence, was told his file was still under review. Justice Danielle Ferron was not convinced by his health and family explanations. But she accepted that he "did not understand that a final decision had been reached" (para 8). On his evidence, the CRA had also confirmed receiving faxed documents that its decision said never arrived. That was enough for "some potential merit" (para 9).
An unopposed win is a start, not a proof. The next one was fought.
In Hein v Canada (Attorney General) (Federal Court file 26-T-67, March 2, 2026), the applicant called the CRA the day after his second review came back against him. He was told to put a request for reconsideration in writing, did so that day, and was later told it was in a queue. The government opposed his motion and said he had taken too long, down to the 33 days between hiring a lawyer and filing. But it conceded that, given what the CRA had told him, he "has likely provided a reasonable explanation for at least some of the period of delay" (Respondent's written representations, para 41). Justice Michael Battista granted the extension (p 2).
Wrong turns
In Aabed v Canada (Attorney General) (Federal Court file 26-T-233, July 16, 2026), the applicant did what many people would do: on her own, she went to the Tax Court of Canada. When a CRA representative told her she was in the wrong court, she filed in the Federal Court less than two weeks after her Tax Court filing. Justice Mandy Aylen granted the extension over the government's objection, "particularly given the Applicant's good faith pursuit of an application for judicial review in the wrong legal forum" and "her detailed motion record explaining the basis for her challenge" (pp 2-3). An honest wrong turn, quickly corrected, was not fatal.
Jamieson v Canada (Attorney General) (Federal Court file 26-T-283, September 24, 2026) was a story about an address. After the applicant moved in April 2024, the CRA's letters kept going to his old address, and its email alerts to an inbox he no longer used. On June 2, 2025, he missed a call from the CRA, called back, got his online account working again, and found about 50 unread messages. That is how he learned he had been found ineligible. Seven months after he asked for a second review, the CRA refused in two sentences, counting from "the date of the letter" and saying nothing about the Court. One agent told him to "file a dispute" online, which he could not find a way to do; another, to call the benefits agents. Only on May 8, 2026 was he told he needed a lawyer and the Federal Court. Justice Lobat Sadrehashemi found "some explanation for the delay at issue", "some merit" and no harm to the government (p 2).
In Watton, the government opposed on every point, and Justice Conroy answered each. The government said more time would hurt its collection of the debt. It "provides no evidence or rationale" for that, the judge found, noting that the CRA had been keeping the applicant's tax refunds since April 2025 (p 2). Our reply cited all four earlier orders.
The envelope
In Watton, the government leaned heavily on Yang, released August 17, 2026. Mr. Yang had chosen to receive his CRA mail online (para 2). His letters arrived in his account on June 16, 2022, and the CRA's records showed he opened them 28 days later (paras 4, 17). He asked for a second review about 18 months late (para 8), saying he had either not opened the letters or found them hard to read on a screen (para 7). Justice Negar Azmudeh was not persuaded: "[a]s with physical mail delivered in a closed envelope, the legal time limit runs from the objective date of delivery, not from the date on which the recipient chooses to open it" (para 18).
It is a sensible rule, and on those facts a fair result. The CRA had heard his explanation before saying no (paras 19-21). But the rule carries a condition inside it. An envelope has to arrive before anyone can choose not to open it.
The statute's own word is "notified". A person has 30 days to ask for a second review after the day they are "notified of the decision" (Canada Recovery Benefits Act, s 31(1)). The word comes from the Latin for making something known. Yang holds that delivery is enough, opened or not. In Watton, the question was whether anything had reached her at all. The CRA's letters, meanwhile, count from "the date of this letter" (Yang, para 6). Dates on CRA letters are printed with great precision. When the letters reach anyone is another matter.
The CRA's own records backed her up. Its system logs each time a letter in an online account is opened (Yang, para 4). In Watton, the logs showed no opening of the earlier letters before March 29, 2025, the day she swore she first saw them. That day, logging in herself for the first time to file her tax return, she photographed one of the letters on her screen, texted the photo, and switched her CRA mail to paper. The refusal was first opened on April 13, 2026, the day she swore she first saw it (Respondent's motion record, Exhibits B, D, G and J). The order granting her extension does not mention Yang.
Yang also gives something back. The refusals it collects were upheld "in the absence of an explanation for the failure to request one within the time allowed" (para 24). In Watton, the explanation was on the cover page of her request.
What we tell people now
Counsel should challenge the CRA's refusal, not its first decision. Part 2 of this series explains why.
Put the CRA's letter before the court, including what it leaves out. A letter's silence about the Court does not excuse a missed deadline: a decision-maker has no general duty to tell people they can go to court (Thompson v Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 212, at para 8). But silence helps explain why people keep calling the CRA instead, and in Watton it helped show that she kept trying (p 3).
Count the delay two ways: from the date on the letter, and from the day the person first saw it.
Expect the government to attack the weeks between hiring a lawyer and filing, as it did in Hein and Jamieson. Have the client swear to what was done, date by date. If the CRA is keeping the person's tax refunds to pay down the debt, list each one; in Watton that answered the government's claim of harm (p 2).
Which leaves the uncomfortable lesson. These extensions were won largely on the clients' own records: a phone's call history, a text message with a photo of a letter, a cover page explaining a late request. The people most likely to need more time are the least likely to have kept any of it.
Her phone remembered the forty-eight-minute call of August 7, 2026. The CRA's letter had not mentioned the Court at all. If you receive one of these letters, keep your call log.
