Finance Committee on Dec. 13th, 2021

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lemieux.

In my opinion, it makes a lot of sense to do strong verifications downstream and less upstream. If the systems are good from the start, it avoids the need to do audits later. I congratulate you on your work.

Despite the claims of my colleagues in opposition, it has been established that the fact that emergency programs included pre-payment and post-payment verification processes, whether automated or manual, resulted in thousands of potentially suspicious applications being blocked.

Could you tell us more about the importance of having put these checks in place?

[Marc Lemieux]

We use all the data available to us to uncover transactions that are suspicious or that may involve people who are not eligible for the programs. We apply methods that allow us to ask people to call us to confirm their identity if we suspect identity theft. We have already used this method many times.

We also ask people to call us when we think there is doubt as to eligibility. We work with them to validate their eligibility.

As they were renewed, the programs evolved. Some factors have changed, allowing us to do more robust automated checks. For example, we asked Canadians who wanted to apply to submit their tax returns on time so that we could have that information to do an automatic validation before payment. When this was not done, there could be delays.

The law evolved over time. Now it includes parameters that allow us to ask people to submit their tax returns before making a claim. This evolution of our automated systems allows us to use the information available before payment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Lemieux.

That is the end of our time, which concludes our eighth meeting. We want to thank all of our witnesses, the Auditor General, Ms. Hogan, the Canadian Labour Congress—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, I think the meeting started at 12:10. I think we have another 10 minutes in an hour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We were scheduled to go to 1 p.m.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

We were scheduled to go for an hour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I don't think it was an hour. It's one o'clock. If members would like to go a little bit over, I was just thanking the witnesses for appearing—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Sure.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Yes, please. Can we keep the witnesses for another 10 minutes, please, to get the full hour that we planned?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Members, I'm looking for unanimous consent to do that.

Witnesses, I don't know what your timing is like. Are you available?

Okay, we will go for another 10 minutes. We will split that up with about two minutes each. That will give everybody two minutes each.

We had just finished with the Liberals, so we're going to start with the Conservatives.

Go ahead for two minutes.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have only two minutes here. We are very appreciative of the work of officials, of course, and we do acknowledge that everyone works hard. I think the issue is that, when we have had information presented to the committee and testimony that is almost like a whistle-blower report and there's really been no material changes to the controls, either up front or post-payment verification....

For the Auditor General, are you not concerned that there have been no material changes to the controls that we have seen to administer these benefit programs from those we had for the previous ones? We're not in the same kind of time-sensitive situation we were in 18 months ago.

[Karen Hogan]

Absolutely. As I mentioned previously, I am concerned that there needs to be a shift from that emergency planning reactive mode to one that has a more long-term focus. I would expect to see adjustments and improvements to controls prepayment and that the post-payment work would begin as soon as possible.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you very much. I have perhaps a final question. We saw about 440,000 taxpayers who were ineligible for CERB receive a tax amnesty. Can we calculate how much money the government has not recovered from those individuals? Do we have that number? The question is for CRA officials.

[Marc Lemieux]

Mr. Chair, I'd need more information. I don't know about the amnesty the member is referring to here.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

My understanding is that we sent 440,000 letters to taxpayers who were ineligible for CERB at the end of last year. We then sent them another letter that said don't worry about paying that money back. How much money did we forgo recovering?

[Marc Lemieux]

Mr. Chair, to my knowledge, we never sent a second letter to those individuals. The first letter was to ask the recipients to validate their eligibility, because the agency had information on file showing that they may not be eligible. That letter did not ask them to reimburse at that time. It was an education letter to encourage people to really consider the criteria of the program and their eligibility moving forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Monsieur Lemieux. That's the time.

We're moving to the Bloc and Monsieur Ste-Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm a little unsettled by the new order of the question rounds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We ended with the Liberals the last time, so I'm just....

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

All right, that's clear. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will ask Ms. Hogan the same question that my colleague Mr. Poilievre asked her. First, let me explain why. What does this have to do with Bill C‑2? We, the legislators, are being asked to vote for a multi-billion-dollar bill. As in the case of the aid programs during the pandemic, we are talking about huge sums. In order to move forward, people need to have absolute confidence in the government and our various institutions, whose role includes auditing the work of the government.

Ms. Hogan, I will take Mr. Poilievre's question as my own: did your office present the audits to a lobbyist before they were presented to the House?

[Karen Hogan]

All of the contracts we award to contractors to support us in preparing our audit filings include confidentiality clauses, and we have no reason to believe that these clauses were not well and truly followed.

We have contracted with people who bring the views of all parties, including the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois, to ensure that we consider the views of all Canadians when we prepare to table our reports. As I mentioned, the reports are complete. It's just a matter of helping us get ready for tabling day.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

That answers my question well, and I thank you.

You do understand that absolute confidence in all the institutions that serve the House is essential, especially when we are working on programs of this magnitude.

That concludes my remarks, as I only had two minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also thank all the witnesses for being here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Ste-Marie. That's perfect timing.

We'll move over to Ms. Blaney for a couple of minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to come back to the CLC.

Thank you so much for working so hard to participate today.

When the government announced the cancellation of the Canada recovery benefit, they also announced that they would be creating a new set of income support benefits for workers, which would be available retroactively.

Could you enlighten the committee as to whether you believe any of your members would qualify for the Canada worker lockdown benefit, between October 24 and today?

[Bea Bruske]

Thank you for that.

While we welcome any type of new benefit, our concern with the benefits proposed under Bill C-2 is whether workers would actually qualify for those benefits. We're worried that when there are outbreaks in various parts of the country that may be workplace specific, where workers do not have access to things like paid sick time, they will also not have access to this benefit, based on the fact that there isn't an actual lockdown for that particular region. That is going to leave workers significantly short.

The other concern we have is that employers may not necessarily qualify under the hospitality benefits, for example, because they may not have lost 40% of their business or more. However, workers may have lost a shift or two during that week. For a worker to miss a fifth of their paycheck, that's a fairly significant chunk that they have to navigate and negotiate in terms of how they make their rent check and how they put those groceries on the table, so we are concerned that those benefits don't go nearly far enough.