Ottawa is still unable to quantify the extent of fraud related to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), and no refund requests have been made so far by the IRS to individuals, learned The Press.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
The federal government implemented the CERB in March 2020, at the very start of the pandemic, and maintained it until October 3 of the same year. Nearly 9 million Canadians have benefited from this assistance of $500 per week, a bill which today totals $81.6 billion for the public purse.
While unable to provide specific fraud figures, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) in January began sending “thousands” of letters to Canadians suspected of receiving the CERB without be entitled to it. These audits are likely to span “years,” said Marc Lemieux, deputy commissioner of the collections and audit branch at the CRA, in an interview.
We are at the beginning of the audits, it is quite difficult for us to report on the frauds at this time, on their importance, their number. We have to do our checks before being able to conclude on this subject.
Marc Lemieux, Assistant Commissioner of the Collections and Verification Branch at the Canada Revenue Agency
The CERB program was set up at full speed when a good part of the country’s businesses had to interrupt or suddenly reduce their operations at the start of the pandemic. All Canadians who have seen their salary drop below $1,000 per month have become eligible, without too much bureaucratic fuss.
Ottawa had promised that audits would follow, and that’s what the CRA began doing in January by sending letters to former claimants. The tax authorities used last year’s Records of Employment (T4s) to target people who received too much money. The Agency expects to send “hundreds of thousands” of these missives.
The CRA has also set up a portal where taxpayers who received the CERB without being entitled to it can make a refund at any time. Over 2.13 million payments have been made on a voluntary basis so far.
“To date, the CRA has not required individuals to repay any COVID-19 related benefit amounts and no timeline for repayment has been set,” the CRA said in an email.
Access to information
The Press has been trying since last August to find out the number and value of CERB-related fraud, through several access to information requests. The CRA did not provide the documents within the statutory deadline (30 days) and requested an extension citing several reasons.
These delays led to the filing of a complaint to the Information Commissioner of Canada by The Presswhich was found to be “founded”.
Other access requests about fraud affecting the Canadian Economic Recovery Benefit (PCRE) – which took over from the CERB – also remained unanswered. This program has cost taxpayers $28.4 billion so far.
Deputy Commissioner Marc Lemieux maintains that it is still too early to provide numbers at this stage, although the CRA has already identified hundreds of thousands of Canadians who could have received benefits without being entitled to them.
“The Agency will take the means to protect the integrity of its programs and that means that we will be doing this type of verification there for months, if not years,” he indicated.