Thank you very much.
I want to come back to the question of the CERB amnesty that Ms. Sarangi raised in her opening comments.
There are some provisions in the bill to make it easier for the government to pursue people for CERB debt that the government is claiming. Earlier at committee, I asked the government how much they expected, both what they thought they were owed and what they thought they would be able to reclaim. I want to share just a bit of their answer with you. Maybe as somebody who is an expert in the field, you can help decipher what some of these things mean.
I was surprised that the government said, in response to the question of how much government thinks it's owed for CERB repayments, that “Since post-verification was delayed to January 2022, there are limited results to report on at this time with respect to the volume and amount of CERB overpayments and recoveries.”
I find that curious, because we know—and I believe you said in your testimony, Ms. Sarangi—that the government has sent out a number of letters. I don't know if you have a sense of the quantity of letters they have sent out, but I know that at one time they had sent out over 400,000 letters to various Canadians asking for money back. Presumably they know how many letters they sent out; I think it would be distressing if they didn't. Also, presumably they have a sense of how much they told people they owe in those letters. I found it curious that there was no attempt to quantify that.
They say their work is going to continue over the next four years and that results will be reported as the work unfolds. Nevertheless, they also report that they announced $260 million over four years in the 2020 fall economic statement “to increase their capacity to detect, investigate and address cases of fraud or misrepresentation related to the Canada emergency response benefit”.
They don't know how much is out there and they don't know how much they want back, but they do know that it's worth spending at least $260 million to get it, whatever it happens to be.
I just wonder if you had a reaction to these answers similar to what I had and if, as somebody who is working with people who are directly affected by the government's vigorous attempts to recover this money, you might be able to help fill in some of the blanks around how worthwhile it is to pursue this money.