Originally posted by Mess
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IMO, the reason that they won't, as an administrative practice, retraoactively apply the rules and/or penalize for non compliance was that they (politically) did not want to be seen to be punishing the parent (and by extension the children) for a change in the rules that they may have not been aware of by having to bill them for benefits that they shouldn't have been collecting under the new rules.
I speculate that they relied on the parents to identify that the new rules applied to their family now and that they would come forward and disclose their situation. Indeed the Income Tax Act does require that any change in the living arrangements shall be communicated to the CRA. Again, if the parents failed to advise the CRA that the new rules applied to them, the CRA was probably not of the mindset to punish the parents (and by extension the children) for the oversight in the immediate aftermath of the new rules coming into play.
IMO this policy is proably the best that can be expected in the circumstances, and as the new rules have begun to be more widely known only a couple of years after their inception, the incidence of situations where one parent is incorrectly collecting all the CTB in shared parenting arrangements will decline more and more. It will generally only be the transition period of a few years that this will be problematic.
So there you go!!
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