At the meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts held on January 26, Bob Hamilton, Commissioner of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), found it normal to say that he was not going to follow the recommendation from the Auditor General, Karen Hogan, regarding the $15 billion in wage subsidies provided during the pandemic whose eligibility criteria she finds were not met by the recipients. The CRA thus considered that the individual amounts are so minimal that the investigations would cost more than the benefit to be drawn from them, namely a potential amount of 15 billion, according to the estimate made by the Auditor General!
Is Mr. Hamilton telling us that 15 billion is not a high amount? Has he forgotten that this is public money? […]
In France, the Cour des comptes has judicial power in the control of public finances, particularly when it comes to civil servants who do not take the necessary measures to recover tax revenues or amounts due to the State. It can thus condemn the accounting officer of an administration to reimburse from his own money amounts that he has not been able to recover from a taxpayer, whatever the amount in question. […] The Auditor General of Canada should have the same powers as the Court of Auditors.
The sponsorship scandal revealed by the Auditor General of Canada Sheila Fraser’s report in 2004 gave rise to a commission of inquiry and to court convictions. It would be respectful to taxpayers if a similar debate were initiated by parliamentarians and civil society to compel the CRA to investigate these amounts.
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