Under Canadian Revenue Agency rules, set out by federal legislation, Canadian teachers are prohibited from claiming home expenses even though most teachers maintain home offices or work areas and tend to work 5-20 unbilled volunteer hours a week.  Teachers mark papers, plan lessons, reply to emails, engage in professional learning, prepare report cards, develop curriculum, create exemplars, and take on many other responsibilities and they do this from home, for no additional pay, using their home resources, with no reimbursement afforded to them. 

During Covid, all teachers have been forced to work from home. They were not given a choice and had to continue their job in quarantine.  By and large, Canadian teachers adjusted to the colossal interruption to their lives and did so with grace.  Teachers have done the near-impossible: they converted their entire profession from one teaching mode to another.

Many teachers have had to juggle working full time for our students while also home tutoring our own children. In the home of Ontario high school teacher Jayson Stewart, he, his wife and their five children all had seven computers simultaneously vying for and already expensive and unreliable satellite internet service. They exceeded their data cap every month.

Anyone who runs a home business is allowed to claim a portion of their home expenses, exemptions they can claim at tax time.

We, the undersigned, believe that, as a response to Covid19, to relieve a burden placed on educators, and to recognize the sacrifices made and grace shown by educators during Covid19, that a portion of a teacher's home expenses (internet, phone, heating and cooling, electricity, insurance, property taxes, etc.) should be tax exempt the same way they already are for anyone who runs a home business. 

We, the undersigned, believe that, legislation should be changed to extend these exemptions indefinitely as we recognize that educators work from both home and school locations.