Thank you for that question.
The differential treatment between the three programs doesn't make any sense at all. This government said at the beginning of pandemic that they were not going to leave anybody behind. The dominant narrative was “just apply for CERB and we won't leave anybody behind”. Everybody was in crisis, and we know that benefit really helped people.
There have been some groups of people whose CERB debt has been written off, such as low-income seniors, the self-employed to an extent and students to an extent.
For those low-income individuals and families who still have this repayment, it doesn't make any sense why they're being targeted. That's how they feel. They feel like they are being targeted by the government. When they explain to me how it feels, it feels like the letters are harassment letters because they're getting them over and over again. They don't understand. There's not clear communication. It's really inconsistent, and they don't know where to turn for help.
That the strategy is to keep increasing how much money the CRA gets to pursue for those individuals and families makes no sense whatsoever. Particularly, as you've mentioned, in the wage subsidy, a lot of money was given there. The Attorney General report that I mentioned earlier even talks about how the government didn't collect enough data to be able to make an assessment as to whether the integrity of that program was met. We don't even have the data to say whether it worked well or not, or whether it kept people on the payroll or not.
That's where we should be really focusing our efforts. We should be focusing on recovering large amounts of debt—not five dollars or $10 for the next 15 or 20 years from individuals who are already really struggling.