QUESTION PERIOD — Finance
Recovery of Fraudulent COVID-19 Support Payments
May 15, 2020
Honourable senators, my question, as usual, is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate.
Leader, my question concerns the report that federal employees processing emergency benefits have been told to ignore potential cases of fraud and not to send claims for further investigation unless they are urgent.
Two hundred thousand applications have already been red flagged as possibly fraudulent. Yesterday, Liberal MP Wayne Easter told Minister Morneau:
The government has to make it clear that we’re not going to accept what is outright fraud and that money will be hauled back in. I think somebody needs to be clear.
He went on to say:
The answer . . . hasn’t been clear from the minister or the Prime Minister on that issue.
Leader, we have small businesses that legitimately need help and can’t access it, yet your government has no concern over spending taxpayers’ dollars in instances where abuse is already suspected. Why won’t your government take a stronger stance against fraud, and could you tell us how many of the 200,000 applications received these benefits?
Thank you for your question.
The Prime Minister has been very clear, as has this government, that in this extraordinary time the first and foremost obligation and responsibility of the government is to try to get money into the hands of Canadians who need it as quickly as possible.
There will be some cases, whether a fraud or an inadvertence, where people will have received benefits to which they are not in fact entitled. The government actually has been clear in saying that its first priority is to make sure that the processes in place to get the money out the door to Canadians are not held up and slowed down unnecessarily and unduly. There will be time — and the government is committed to ensuring this — when the tax season and taxes are filed in the coming year that all cases where there have been instances where monies were given incorrectly, either mistakenly in good faith or by fraud, will be pursued. Money will be reimbursed. In cases of fraud, appropriate sanctions will be applied.
To support outright fraud and say we’ll deal with it later is unbelievable.
