Finance Committee on Dec. 10th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I have Madame Chatel on a point of order.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I want to know what the consequence is of allowing more time. I have a proposal to allow this person to answer, but not create a precedent. I'd like to stay on time. I don't want the six minutes allowed to us becoming 15 minutes, so it would be an exception for this witness, but not a rule. We should stay within our time.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Madam Chatel, but there could be a challenge at any time in regard to the timing.

Go ahead, Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Chair, on a point of order, could we just suspend for two minutes, to calm things a bit?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, let's suspend for two minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call the committee back to order.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Chair, I will withdraw my challenge if the witnesses are able to answer.

You'll recall that my question was whether there have been studies on the impacts of cancelling the CRB on low-income workers and self-employed workers, and whether they would be prepared to share those studies with the committee.

[Frank Vermaeten]

I'm happy to answer that.

I've not been aware of any formal published studies on this.

I will, if I may, supplement, that yes, the Department of Finance and Employment and Social Development have been looking at the need for these programs, and the strategy has been to evolve these programs to fit the economic situation. That's why the CERB, when it started, was giving benefits to about four million people in that first week. Over time, as we moved to the CRB and the CRCB, we were down to 800,000 people who were using it a little while ago.

I'm not sure whether there has been.... I don't think there's been a formal study that says at that point.... However, the responsible departments, ESDC and the Department of Finance, have been looking at the need for these programs and how they should evolve with the economic situation and the pandemic situation.

I hope that wasn't too much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Vermaeten. Thank you, Mr. Julian.

Now we're off to—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

On a point of order, we have Mr. Poilievre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

First of all, I want to thank you for reversing your earlier decision. We could have saved a lot of time if you had done that at the outset.

In your short time as chair, this is not the first time that you've caused disruption in the committee. I would encourage you to look back at how your predecessor, who was also a Liberal and a member of the government, tried to stay out of the debate, rather than trying to favour one side of the debate, as you did yesterday. Your role is to facilitate the debate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Mr. Poilievre—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

You are a servant and not a master of the committee. I just wanted to put that on the record, and to thank you for reversing yourself. Thank you.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

On a point of order, we have Mr. Baker.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I have to respond to what Mr. Poilievre just said. Mr. Chair, you have tried to be fair to all members on all sides of this committee. If there's been any disruption, for the most part it's been caused by Mr. Poilievre and some of his antics at this committee. You've done the best you can to try to keep these meetings productive and to treat everybody fairly.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Is this a point of order, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We are moving forward. We're going to the second round.

We have Mr. Chambers.

I want to respect the witnesses. They are here to provide answers to our questions.

Mr. Chambers, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I had quite some time to think about these questions, so I hope they're good.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Vermaeten and all of the officials we see here and appearing before us today at the committee.

I want to also thank you for some very detailed information that you provided to this committee upon request. I understand that was done in very, very short order and it was very detailed, and I will focus a few of my questions on that information. We received this just as the committee started. I'm just looking for a little bit of clarification, so if you want to pull that document up, that would be helpful.

With respect to some of the audits and the numbers, I'm looking for clarification, and it looks as though there were about 700 audits completed in phase one with respect to CEWS. This is post-verification, as I understand, and about 2,500 are currently in progress. Is it safe to say that is about 3,200 audits out of approximately 4.7 million applications? Is that a fair characterization?

[Cathy Hawara, Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Programs Branch, Canada Revenue Agency]

I can take that question.

Just to clarify, phase one of the audit is actually still ongoing. It was more of a sort of preliminary research audit phase, if you will, as we were learning more about the risks and how best to deploy our audit resources going forward. You're correct that 700 is the number of audits, but they are not all completed. That work is still ongoing.

We were able to launch our second phase in November, just this year. Those are just getting under way.

That's just to say, then, that the results will inform our future audit activities in this space. We're not quite there yet. It's still ongoing.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you.

I just noted on the CRB audits that it said “will be conducting in 2022”, so is it safe to say there have been no post-verification audits on the CRB so far, or did I read that incorrectly?