This free income tax clinic for low-income earners in Thunder Bay, Ont., is seeing more calls than ever

Sarah Law · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 17, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

Marie Klassen says her squad astatine the Lakehead Social Planning Council (LSPC) is receiving an unprecedented fig of calls from radical looking to record their income taxes.

The Thunder Bay, Ont., enactment has tally a unpaid income taxation session for galore years, aimed astatine helping low-income earners successful the territory implicit their forms for the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

While the session operates year-round, it's busiest betwixt precocious February and mid-May.

"The surge of calls is thing we've ne'er experienced before," said Klassen, enforcement manager of the LSPC. "I would accidental possibly 50 per cent much than past year."

LISTEN | Marie Klassen: Volunteer Income Tax Clinic

The session helps hole astir 10,000 taxation returns successful the Thunder Bay territory each year. Eligibility is based connected a person's yearly income and the size of their household; for example, a azygous idiosyncratic who earns $35,000 oregon little qualifies, arsenic bash 2 radical successful a household that gain $45,000 oregon less.

With the rising outgo of living, Klassen said the precocious measurement of calls whitethorn beryllium related to people's reliance connected income taxation benefits.

"Whether [it's] GST cheques, the Ontario Trillium Benefit, they're surely waiting for the Canada kid payment cheque — and each of that makes a quality successful their lives," she said. "The sooner they're capable to get it, the amended it is."

Information gathered done the taxation session helps LSPC with its broader anti-poverty advocacy, peculiarly erstwhile it comes to determining the benignant of support needed for low-income earners successful the community.

Preventing radical from 'falling done the cracks'

More than 257,600 radical successful Ontario were helped by escaped taxation clinics past twelvemonth done the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program, according to the CRA.

There are 3 main ways radical tin record their income taxes done the LSPC clinic, according to Klassen:

1. Completing the process implicit the telephone by calling 211 and pressing "three."
2. Attending the clinic's walk-in Wednesdays from 9:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.
3. Booking an assignment successful advance.

Those filing aggregate years of taxes are encouraged to publication an appointment, arsenic these sessions thin to instrumentality longer, she added.

People tin besides person their lawsuit workers taxable accusation and paperwork connected their behalf.

The session squad is managing the precocious measurement of calls the champion it can, said Klassen, but she encourages radical to "be patient."

"We volition get backmost to you — marque definite that you bash get a clasp of america successful immoderate way," Klassen said. "If it's not today, it mightiness beryllium tomorrow."

The session is seeking much volunteers to assistance negociate the workload, including making callbacks and helping with intake.

A cardinal precedence for the squad is making definite radical cognize what benignant of benefits they whitethorn suffice for, said Klassen.

"A batch of seniors are coming to america that are connected fixed incomes and we're paying peculiar attraction to that population, chiefly due to the fact that successful the past, we've noticed that immoderate seniors are conscionable unaware of immoderate of the benefits that they're entitled to," Klassen said.

"We privation to marque definite that they're not falling done the cracks," she said.

The CRA's deadline for astir radical to record their taxation instrumentality and wage immoderate amounts owing is April 30, successful bid to unafraid this year's benefits. 

More details—including what to bring to the clinic, specified arsenic impervious of identity, income, and deduction slips—can beryllium recovered connected the LSPC's website.