OTTAWA — The Auditor General of Canada, Karen Hogan, is concerned about the “lack of rigor” of federal departments in recovering benefits that were overpaid, on an emergency basis, during the COVID-19 crisis.
In one of their two highly anticipated reports tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, Hogan and her team concluded that Ottawa failed to have “rigorous and comprehensive plans to verify the eligibility of recipients” who used drug programs. help such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).
“I am concerned about the lack of rigor in post-payment verification and collection activities,” Ms. Hogan said in a press briefing, about the audit carried out on several emergency benefit programs.
The Auditor General’s analysis focused on the CERB, which was very popular at the start of the pandemic, but also on other programs, such as the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) and the Emergency Wage Subsidy. .
The Office of the Auditor General was able to establish that $4.6 billion was overpaid to ineligible recipients and that a large sum of at least $27.4 billion should be examined since it could prove to be a overpayment.
However, we also note that the government of Justin Trudeau does not plan to “verify all payments made to recipients identified as at risk of being ineligible”.
Ms. Hogan stressed at a press conference that she recommended that the responsible departments conduct more “exhaustive” audits than those planned to recover the overpaid money.
As of the completion of the Auditor General’s audit review – of the work of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) – Ottawa had recovered only $2.3 billion, according to data provided to Ms. Hogan’s office.
Liberals defend CRA plan and ‘rigor’
National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier expressed the Trudeau government’s “disagreement” with Ms. Hogan’s estimates of “overpayments related to business subsidies”. She has, in the same breath, defended the plan of the ARC and the “rigor” of the work that is carried out there.
“The agency continues its painstaking audit work and while it is too early to comment on the total amount of overpayments, the results so far suggest a higher level of compliance than that estimated by the Auditor General” , she said in a press scrum.
She argued that in the case of the CERB, it took months for the CRA to have the data needed to ensure recipients were eligible after the money was paid.
“If we remember correctly, in 2020, the agency did not have the tax data for 2019 allowing it, for example, to confirm the income of people who applied for the CERB”, argued Ms. Lebouthillier, noting that the deadline for filing tax returns and paying taxes had been extended.
The audit of these rushed initiatives, which stems from a legally required review, highlights that Ottawa has chosen the approach of conducting the bulk of eligibility checks after benefits are paid in order to respond to the emergency of the situation. In the interlude, the responsible departments “relyed on the personal attestations” of the applicants.
“Post-payment eligibility verification was all the more important because there was a risk that some recipients would not be eligible for the benefits they had received,” says Hogan’s office.
However, these audits carried out after the fact, in addition to being deemed insufficient, are experiencing delays that are worrying in the eyes of the Auditor General.
“The department and agency may not complete all scheduled post-payment audits within the established timelines,” it wrote. They may therefore be unable to raise and collect some of the amounts due.”
According to CRA officials who answered a few questions from the media Tuesday afternoon, Ottawa is on track to recover the overpayment money before it’s too late.
“We have a plan in place. We are very, very comfortable with the plan,” said one of these officials.
She mentioned that approximately 1700 audits have been completed, that another 1900 are in progress and that 2500 will be launched next year.
“We are tackling the files that present the highest risks. But we are encouraged by the results to date. We have a fairly high level of compliance from the organizations we have audited,” said the official.
Conservatives and Bloc Québécois demand adjustments
Reacting to Ms. Hogan’s finding of “lack of rigor”, the Quebec lieutenant for the conservative opposition, Pierre Paul-Hus, affirmed that “it shows how there is laxity in the overall management of the programs” .
Alongside his fellow finance critic, Jasraj Singh Hallan, he called on Justin Trudeau’s Liberals for a new plan to recover amounts fraudulently collected.
“We had raised a flag in 2020 saying that we should be careful and put beacons,” said Mr. Paul-Hus, adding that he feared other overpayments in the case of new initiatives emerging. , such as the Canada dental benefit.
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet, in a press scrum, called on Ottawa to adjust the situation based on “recommendations that are made for future references”.
“There are sums to be recovered within deadlines which could prove to be too short. I strongly recommend that the government target the most likely cases of abuse with the largest sums,” he said before heading to the House of Commons for question period.
For his part, the New Democratic Party (NDP) finance critic, Daniel Blaikie, called on the government to exercise caution to prevent “people here who have made a request in good faith to these programs and who do not have the money to repay (are) persecuted”.
In a written statement, he noted that the NDP is calling for the establishment of “an amnesty for CERB and PCRE reimbursement for low-income people.”
