(Ottawa) Benefits to reduce poverty are not reaching the people they are supposed to help the most, according to the auditor general. The Canada Revenue Agency and the Department of Employment and Social Development received $18 million during the last fiscal year to try to contact them.
Posted at 10:04 a.m.
Aboriginal people, people in precarious housing, new immigrants to Canada, people with disabilities, seniors and young people are the six groups that have to overcome the most obstacles to obtain these benefits.
Some do not file the tax return necessary to qualify for the Canada Child Benefit, the Guaranteed Income Supplement or the Canada Workers Benefit. Others do not have a social insurance number, have difficulty expressing themselves in both official languages, have a low level of literacy or live in a remote region.
Photo Adrian Wyld, archives The Canadian Press
Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada
Auditor General Karen Hogan says the agency and the department “did not do enough to help hard-to-reach populations access benefits.” They don’t really know how many of those groups don’t get them. They also don’t know how many ended up receiving the benefits they were entitled to, despite spending millions to educate them.
“The estimates overestimated benefit utilization since they did not always take into account people who had not filed taxes, a requirement for obtaining most benefits,” writes Ms.me Hogan while acknowledging that these people are hard to spot.
She recommends better collaboration between the Canada Revenue Agency, the Department of Employment and Social Development and Statistics Canada to properly measure the use of benefits. The Agency and the Department should also work together to improve their services for vulnerable people and should measure the effectiveness of their awareness-raising activities with them. These three recommendations were all accepted.