Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Meaghan Grenville sought judicial review of the Commission's refusal to write off an employment insurance overpayment debt arising from a calculation error on her maternity and parental benefits application.

• The overpayment resulted from the Applicant and her spouse collectively claiming 50 weeks of benefits, exceeding the statutory maximum of 40 weeks under the Employment Insurance Act.

• Under section 56 of the EI Regulations, a debt write-off requires meeting conditions precedent — including that the overpayment did not arise from the debtor's own error or misrepresentation — which the Applicant could not satisfy.

• Financial hardship was asserted on judicial review but was unsupported by evidence in the original Write-Off Request, and the Court excluded new evidence not before the decision-maker.

• Despite the Applicant's proactive conduct in 2021 and the Commission's approximately two-year delay in issuing the Notice of Debt, these factors were not central to the statutory write-off analysis under section 56.

• Applying the reasonableness standard from Vavilov, the Court found the Commission's decision was justified, transparent, and intelligible, and dismissed the application without costs.

The facts of the case
In April 2020, Meaghan Grenville applied for maternity and parental benefits under the Employment Insurance Act. She selected "standard parental benefits" and elected to share benefits with her spouse. Grenville requested 35 weeks for herself, while her spouse simultaneously applied for 15 weeks. Together, they claimed a total of 50 weeks of benefits, which exceeded the maximum of 40 weeks permitted when benefits are shared between partners under paragraph 23(4.1)(a) of the EI Act. Because she was sharing benefits with her spouse who claimed 15 weeks, Grenville should have received only 25 weeks. Instead, she received 34 weeks of benefits payments before she became aware of the overpayment, resulting in nine weeks of overpaid benefits.

The applicant's proactive steps and the Commission's delay
On March 12, 2021, Grenville contacted Service Canada to advise them that she had become aware of overpayments of benefits. She asked that the payments be stopped and inquired about repayment. During this call, the agent informed her that the error occurred because she had claimed too many weeks on her form. The Applicant further states that the agent informed her that the system that notes parental file linkage — designed to prevent calculation errors resulting in overpayment — did not occur in her case. She was advised that if an overpayment is applied, a notice of debt would be sent to her in the mail, and that a work order would be opened to further look into the matter. Despite this, Grenville received no other communications until June 2023. It was not until May 2023, when she contacted Service Canada on an unrelated matter, that the unaddressed 2021 work order and the debt were discovered. On June 3, 2023, she received a Notice of Debt for the nine weeks of overpayment.

The write-off request and the Commission's decision
On June 16, 2023, Grenville submitted a request for reconsideration to the Commission, including a form and a letter setting out the grounds for reconsideration. The Commission considered this as a write-off request pursuant to section 56 of the Employment Insurance Regulations. In her request, she explained the calculation error, detailed the steps she took in 2021, and pointed to the error in parental validation and file linkage on the Commission's end as well as the fact that more than two years had passed with the issue unaddressed. She stated that she and her husband "have not financially planned for this and did make every effort in the past to address this at the time of the issue in 2020." The Commission's agent reviewed the request and concluded that the overpayment of benefits was the result of an error on the part of the Applicant and her spouse, and that the Applicant did not contact the Commission until almost all weeks were paid. The agent stated that "a write-off of overpayments should not apply to situations where the Commission paid benefits in error and the claimant ought to have known they were not entitled to all or some of the benefits, but did not take steps to advise the Commission in order to rectify the situation." The agent further concluded that "the defence that the Commission should not have paid benefits is not valid when a reasonable person should have known or realized that something was not right." On August 16, 2023, the agent contacted Grenville by phone to communicate the decision verbally. A letter was also sent on August 17, 2023, informing her that the Commission could not follow through with the request for reconsideration because it did not have authority to reconsider the issue.

The statutory framework: section 56 of the EI Regulations
The legal framework governing debt write-offs is found in section 56 of the EI Regulations. Under subsection 56(1), the Commission may write off a debt only if one of several conditions precedent is met. These include situations where the total debt does not exceed $100 (paragraph (a)), the debtor is deceased (paragraph (b)), the debtor is a discharged bankrupt (paragraph (c)), the debtor is an undischarged bankrupt in respect of whom the final dividend has been paid and the trustee has been discharged (paragraph (d)), the overpayment does not arise from the debtor's own error or false or misleading declaration or representation (paragraph (e)), or the Commission considers that the debt is uncollectable, would result in undue hardship to the debtor, or that administrative costs of collection would likely equal or exceed the amount owed (paragraph (f)). Section 56(2) permits a write-off for benefits received more than twelve months before the Commission notifies the debtor of the overpayment, but requires as a threshold condition that the overpayment does not arise from the debtor's error or false or misleading declaration or representation. The Respondent submitted that the use of the word "may" in sections 56(1) and 56(2) indicates that the Commission's decision to write off a debt is always discretionary, even where the criteria within section 56 are present. The determination under section 56 is a two-step process: the first step is to determine eligibility according to the section, and the second step is whether the discretion will be exercised to write off the debt.

The Court's analysis and ruling on judicial review
Grenville's debt was more than $100 and she was not deceased or bankrupt, so paragraphs 56(1)(a) through (d) of the EI Regulations did not apply to her. She agreed that the overpayment of benefits arose from an error she made in her benefit forms, which meant paragraph 56(1)(e) and the corresponding threshold condition in section 56(2) could not be satisfied. While she asserted financial hardship under paragraph 56(1)(f) on judicial review, the Court noted there was no evidence to support this assertion in her Write-Off Request before the decision-maker. The Court also declined to consider new evidence introduced by both parties — including financial documentation relating to the Applicant's salary and expenses and correspondence from the CRA — as none fell within the recognized exceptions for admitting evidence not before the decision-maker. Applying the reasonableness standard of review established in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, the Court assessed whether the decision bore the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency, and intelligibility. The Court acknowledged that the Applicant believed the decision should have engaged more with her arguments and taken into consideration her actions in 2021 and the Commission's delay, but held that these arguments were not central to the decision or the issues that had to be addressed under section 56. Because none of the conditions precedent under section 56 were met, the Commission was unable to exercise any discretion to write off the debt. The Federal Court, per the Honourable Madam Justice Ngo, dismissed the application for judicial review. No costs were ordered, as the Respondent, the Attorney General of Canada, did not seek them. The exact monetary value of the overpayment debt owed by Grenville for the nine weeks of overpaid benefits was not specified in the decision.