In May, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) sent notices to more than 260,000 Canadians saying they had received money they weren’t entitled to and would have to pay it back. But since September, only around 19,000 of those people – less than a tenth of the total – have made payments to the CRA, according to documents tabled in the House of Commons earlier this week. About $16 million has been repaid since May, but $1.2 billion is still outstanding, the documents said. Ron Anicich, an audio technician from Toronto, received one of the notices from the CRA warning him that he would have to pay back his CERB benefits. She said she felt “confused, but mostly panicked” because she believed she was entitled to the money. “I’m sure I would be homeless if it wasn’t available to me at the time,” he said. Programs like CERB were based on an attestation — applicants themselves had to determine whether they were eligible based on the criteria. At the time, the government promised that those who applied for the programs in good faith and made a mistake about their eligibility would not face penalties but would have to pay it back. The CRA told CBC there is no deadline for people to pay back and it has pledged to be flexible. Anich said he’s not sure he’ll be able to repay the money anytime soon. “The overwhelming debt that I have absolutely no way of paying and I can’t see any way out of this situation in my immediate future — it’s depressing, frankly,” Anich said. “It’s pretty rotten.”
Thousands were voluntarily repaid
The CRA said in its filings that before the notices were sent, 341,000 Canadians voluntarily repaid about $910 million in benefits they could not receive. NDP finance critic Daniel Blaikie said the federal government should take a hard look at those 260,000 Canadians who still owe, determine which of them are low-income and provide them with debt forgiveness. “What we don’t know is how much of that debt is actually recoverable. Because if it’s people making less than $20,000 a year or $24,000 a year in the current economy, they don’t have the money to pay off the national debt,” Blaikie said. “Going after them for that money and spending money to pay people to go after them is not going to pay off.” NDP finance critic Daniel Blaikie says the government should provide amnesty to low-income Canadians who are being asked to pay back pandemic benefits they weren’t entitled to. (David Kawai/The Canadian Press) Blaikie argued that the government should instead work to recover money from fraudsters who took advantage of the pandemic schemes. A spokesman for National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier said all Canadians who received pandemic benefits in error will have to pay back the money, but insisted the government will be flexible with those who cannot pay it back immediately. “Canada Revenue Agency will work with Canadians with empathy and flexibility while ensuring that public funds go to those who are eligible,” Lebouthillier spokesman Chris MacMillan said in an email.
Conservatives say more guardrails are needed
Conservative MP Kelly McCauley agreed that those who received the wrong benefits should still have to repay the money – but accepted that it may take some time to recover all the funds. “I would like to see the taxpayers’ money that was wrongly paid out be recovered, whether that’s tomorrow or a month from now or six months from now,” McCauley said, adding that it was likely to be “a multi-year process.” . While he said he recognized the urgent need to quickly roll out benefits like CERB early in the pandemic, McCauley criticized the Liberals for not using that experience to build guardrails for other programs. Conservative MP Kelly McCauley says the government needs to improve the guardrails around other programs like the Canada Workers Benefit. (CBC News) McCauley pointed to a $4 billion boost to the Canada Workers Benefit — a tax credit for low-income workers — in the recent fall economic statement. The additional funding is intended to cover advances made to Canadians who qualified for the program last year. But the Parliamentary Budget Officer said this week that by automatically applying payments to everyone who qualified last year, the benefit would likely go to people who are no longer eligible this year because their annual income has risen above the scheme’s limit. “The significant cost of this … measure is largely due to the government’s policy decision not to recover these advances when recipients’ incomes rise and they become ineligible for benefits,” the PBO report said. CBC News reached out to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s office for a response to the PBO report, but did not receive an official response prior to publication. McCauley said the government should have more guardrails to ensure only those who are eligible receive the benefit. “Instead of planning properly and making sure those who deserve it and need it the most get paid, it seems to be an ongoing liberal scheme [throwing] so much money out the door without seeing who actually qualifies for it,” McCauley said.
