QUESTION PERIOD — National Revenue
COVID-19 Support Payments
March 21, 2023
My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate. Senator Gold, many are calling on the government to further investigate emergency COVID benefits and subsidy amounts paid to Canadians who may have inadvertently received money they were ineligible for. In her fall report, the Auditor General refers to some $32 billion in total payments, including $15.5 billion for the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy.
I appreciate that the CRA — the Canada Revenue Agency — does not agree with some of the Auditor General’s findings, but the point remains that the agency needs a plan of action to verify the millions of benefit applications it received. As the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, told our National Finance Committee:
. . . the CRA doesn’t deem it worthy, appropriate or worth the effort to go after an alleged $15 billion in potential overpayments . . . .
Can you assure us that the government is committed to recovering what could be millions or even billions of dollars that may have gone to ineligible candidates?
Thank you for your question. During the pandemic, as you all know, the government took very decisive and unprecedented action to help Canadians get through this crisis, to save lives and help our economy, and it worked. But it was clear from the beginning, as I have said on many occasions, that the CRA would begin verifications once the time was right and once it had the required data to do so. Indeed, as you alluded to, verifications have begun and assessments are being made and continue to be made as to where the efforts of the CRA should be focused.
It will take some time to complete this work. The government does not accept the numbers that the Auditor General put forward in terms of the magnitude of the problem, but there was a problem, of course. In that regard, fraud will not be tolerated. The CRA will continue to use all of its tools to identify and recover the amounts that were disbursed to ineligible recipients.
As you know, when Parliament adopted the bills that allowed for the creation, administration and distribution of various emergency COVID benefits, we also legislated timelines for the verification of eligibility. In some cases, it was only 36 months, and that deadline is fast approaching. Will the government consider extending this deadline in order to give the CRA the necessary time to adequately verify the distribution of its payment support to Canadians? I think it’s important to send the right message to Canadians that we value their hard-earned money and that the agency is serious and rigorous about this undertaking.
I agree with you entirely. The government is serious, and the CRA will be rigorous. But if I understand your question correctly, senator, you’re asking whether the deadline into the investigation will be extended in matters of ineligibility and potential fraud. In that regard, the deadline in the bills to which you referred doesn’t apply to cases of fraud or suspected fraud; therefore, there’s no need for an extension and the work will continue.
