Kelly Gabla has the whole paper trail showing what happened. Even so, she's incredulous Canada Revenue Agency mailed her confidential tax records to a jailed con man.

"I can't believe he did it," Gabla told CTV News. "I can't believe he got away with it."

The man she's referring to is 41-year-old Mark Andrew Johnston, her former employer. When he hired her as an office assistant in late 2004, Gabla said she had no idea he was out on parole. Johnston had been sent to prison in 2002, after pleading guilty to 319 counts of tax fraud. He is a career identity thief -- with a long record of fraud-related convictions.

"I'm scared to this day," Gabla said. "I am now very cautious of what I do."

Her job in Johnston's rented office ended abruptly when he was sent back to prison for parole violations. It was then that her troubles with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) began.

"I don't trust them," said Gabla. "I am better at guarding my privacy than they are."

Records show, when Johnston was in prison, the CRA received a letter -- supposedly from Gabla -- requesting every tax return she'd ever filed. Her last name was misspelled and her signature clearly forged. The return address given was a rented post office box -- not Gabla's address CRA had in their records. The agency mailed the tax records to the P.O. box anyway.

"Nobody looked. Nobody checked. Nobody verified anything," Gabla said. "He was able to do it from jail."

Gabla said the P.O. box was one of several rented by Johnston. Months later, when he got out of prison, Gabla said he met with her, pulled out her tax records, and laughed. She was floored.

"Oh, he was happy," Gabla said. "He was happy. Look -- I did it! I outsmarted the government."

Gabla told CTV News she's been living in fear ever since. She moved and put her property in another name. Still, she worries every day that her tax information will be used to commit crimes in her name.

"Incompetent is the best word," Gabla said, in describing her opinion of CRA. "We go to work every day. We pay our taxes and we do what's expected of us in their eyes. They should do what we expect of them, too."

A spokesperson from the Canada Revenue Agency told CTV News what transpired in Gabla's case should never happen. Ariane Boyer said when a taxpayer asks for information, if the address given is not the same as what's in CRA's records the CRA is supposed to contact the person directly.

"They check the records against the address," Boyer said. "If it's not the same address they will call to confirm the new address. (The taxpayer) would need to send their driver's license information to prove the same identity."

Boyer also confirmed, if that isn't done it's a breach of the Privacy Act. When CTV News asked CRA for an on-camera interview about this, though, Boyer turned us down -- citing privacy concerns.

"There is no real privacy," said Gabla. "Maybe when it pertains to them and what they want but not where it pertains to the average Canadian."

The minister responsible for CRA, Carol Skelton, also wasn't available to talk about this. But, Canada's Privacy Commisioner, Jennifer Stoddart, was. She said she is "very concerned" about several recent privacy breaches involving CRA, and is launching an investigation into the agency's privacy-related   practices.

"I am actually now looking into the practices of (CRA) in a systemic manner," Stoddart told CTV News. "We haven't done a systemic investigation (of CRA) for awhile. We've dealt with a series of complaints...so I think it's time to look at this."

The Privacy Commissioner's office received 92 complaints from Canadians about breach of privacy by CRA in the fiscal year 2005/06. Stoddart says the bigger problem is that the law governing CRA's privacy practices is way out of date.

"The laws under which (taxpayer) rights are administered under the Privacy Act are about 30 years out of date and I cannot get (taxpayers) any redress," she said. "If something happens -- if the tax information is inadvertently spilled -- they literally have no redress under the law."

Stoddart concluded, "We hold the Canadian government to a much lower standard than we hold Canadian business."

That sounds like exactly what Kelly Gabla suspected -- that trying to go after CRA for redress would be futile.

"They're huge. Red tape and pass the buck," she said. "I would probably be 75 years old before I won -- or got anywhere."

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