Another component of the answer that I found curious talked about how they're willing to work with families one-on-one on repayment plans. Of course, we know that in some cases we're talking about families who don't have any flex in their budgets. If you were talking about something they could afford, you might be talking about five dollars a month or something like that.
They say, “This approach allows ESDC and the CRA to be responsive to each individual's unique financial situation, as opposed to an amnesty, which may not capture everyone's financial hardship situation.” I mean, I am finding it....
You know, when it comes to deliberate fraud, there are rules about that. There's a whole infrastructure that prohibits fraud. Fraud was always illegal. There were additional provisions passed during the pandemic making fraud—I don't know—more illegal, I guess, but certainly addressing it directly. For people who were deliberately fraudulent, there's a way to pursue those folks. What we're talking about is a larger category, which could include people who applied in good faith, really thinking they were eligible, and who were experiencing real financial hardship as a result of the pandemic, and in some cases were told either by government MPs or by government officials at the CRA to apply now and figure it out later.
Of course, they're not able to figure it out later. They'd been given the impression that they were eligible for the money and they weren't in a position to be able to hold it in an account. They were applying because they were desperate at the time, given the circumstances of the pandemic.
I'm just wondering, how does an amnesty not respond to that concern?