Government Operations Committee on May 11th, 2020

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

The question is this. Many ineligible people have applied for the CERB who should not have applied, who should not be getting this money. You mentioned there were seven and a half million applications you received from four and a half million Canadians and your system was so incredible that you were able to basically identify and make sure that you reviewed and controlled every single application that went through the system. How is it you were not able to discover the ineligible people who have applied for the CERB at the same time, before there is a backlog down the road?

[Diane Lebouthillier, Liberal, Gaspésie—Les-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

I thank my colleague for his question. As I mentioned, the Agency put in place a simple and quick program to respond without delay to Canadians who were in great need. We also know that people may have inadvertently made mistakes. I would not want to assume that people are dishonest. As Mr. Vermaeten mentioned earlier, audits will begin next year. In any event, it is part of the agency's mandate to conduct audits. We are going to make sure that people who owe money to the agency turn that money over.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Minister, why did the audit not happen up front, since you designed the program specifically to do so? Why did it not happen at the beginning?

[Diane Lebouthillier, Liberal, Gaspésie—Les-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

I think the answer is very simple: this is a historic situation. Canadians were experiencing great hardship and losing their jobs. The fact that 7.5 million people applied shows how important this program was to our population.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

But some people probably received more than $6,000 in the first two weeks. That means there must be a red flag there to tell you money is going where it should not be going. In the meantime, how many applicants do you think applied when they were ineligible?

[Diane Lebouthillier, Liberal, Gaspésie—Les-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

When the audits are done, we will be able to recover the money, but my primary objective was really to ensure that families, single mothers, people in our community, workers who had lost their jobs and seniors who were in financial difficulty because of COVID-19 received money to help them get through this crisis.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

The question is, how many? What do you estimate the number of people to be? That's the question.

[Diane Lebouthillier, Liberal, Gaspésie—Les-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

When we have responded to the population's plight, when we have fed our people, when we have made sure that people's housing is paid for and that our families and our people are safe, we will be happy to do the checks and give that information to my colleague.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

That's not the question. The question is, how many? What do you estimate?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'm sorry, Mr. Aboultaif. We're completely out of time.

Minister, if you don't mind, please respond to Mr. Aboultaif's question in writing to our clerk.

We will now go to Mr. Jowhari for four minutes, please.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To save the minister and the department from providing a response in writing, I'm going to ask the same question again that I had asked earlier.

Minister, in your opening statement that was submitted, you mentioned the mobilization of so many CRA resources as well as the reassignment of up to about 7,500 employees who answered the call. You also talked about keeping the process's integrity as well as implementing strict auditing.

Can you share with us some of the initial challenges in your partnership with the employees and in the training? How did you work with the unions and other departments, such as ESDC, to be able to roll out all these programs, which were coming at different stages?

[Diane Lebouthillier, Liberal, Gaspésie—Les-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

I thank my colleague for his important question. Indeed, when we made the request to the agency's employees, we knew that we would need additional call centre staff. Seven thousand five hundred Canada Revenue Agency members offered to help.

For the much more technical details, I'll direct you to Commissioner Hamilton.

[Bob Hamilton]

Sure. I'm happy to come in, Mr. Chair, if you can hear me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Yes. Go ahead, please, sir.

[Bob Hamilton]

To understand this, I think, without going on too long—but it is a very interesting story for the agency—you can think about the unprecedented volume of demands we had and the strain it was going to put on not only our call centres but on processing at other parts of the agency. This was coupled together with the physical distancing that we had to adhere to and with keeping people at home to try to flatten the curve and not spread the virus.

That was quite an interesting combination of factors to have to put in place, so we did realign the agency. We pushed a pilot project that we had for enabling call centre agents to take calls remotely. It was going to be a small-scale project and it turned into one on a very big scale because of the nature of it. We had to get people on the phones to answer the questions. Our call centre volumes are very high. That was one thing we did.

We had other parts of the agency that couldn't work because they needed the access to the workspace, but they had to stay home, and because we slowed down our audit, verification and collection activities, we had those people available. We put out a call and said, “If anybody can help with the phones, please put your name forward.” That's—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

How did you manage the long hours, the 11 and 12 hours, with the employees as well as the union?

[Bob Hamilton]

Well, we had very good discussions with the union every step of the way as we tried to develop our business plan. We've been walking this balance between keeping people separated and at home as much as possible while trying to get the very important work done. We worked very much hand in hand with the unions.

We've had shift work in a couple of places, and as the crisis has moved on, we've had to change our business plan to try to bring in other parts of the agency. At each step of the way, we've checked that business continuity plan with our unions and our employees. We've had good communication with employees to tell them what's going on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you, Mr. Hamilton, sir.

We'll now go to our final two-minute rounds.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have two minutes, please.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to complete the question I was asking earlier. Every business, when it fills out the T2 form in its income tax return, mentions its shareholders and owners. So it is easy for officials to know who owns which business and to trace it back to the owner of the parent company. If the parent company has assets in tax havens, you can get the information.

First, Madam Minister, does the Canada Revenue Agency maintain a list of the companies that use tax havens?

Second, have you considered using this list to ensure that those receiving government assistance are not companies that use tax havens?

It's not complicated, just take the list and check the information on the T2 form to see if the company uses tax havens or not.

[Diane Lebouthillier, Liberal, Gaspésie—Les-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

I know this is a very important issue for you. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Ted Gallivan, who can answer you about the very technical aspects. It's a lot more complex than you think.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I am an accountant.

[Ted Gallivan]

Of course, we have several lists. The complexity relates to the companies' behaviour. Some companies have abusive tax planning that targets Luxembourg, for example. We know which companies are targeting Barbados or other tax shelters.

We are therefore very aware of the schemes used, but we are also aware of the case law in Canada. We look at the cases that are before the courts, hence the complexity of this issue. There's a lot of planning—

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I understand your answer, but—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I have to interrupt you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

You are now completely out of time.

We'll go now to Mr. Green for our final intervention, for two minutes, please.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much to the honourable minister.

You will note that on April 15, I provided your ministry with a letter requesting that you provide information on how individuals who are not able to file their taxes by the June 1 date can ensure that their supplementary income supports, such as the GIS, the GST, child tax benefits and other associated provincial benefits are not cut off as a result. In my letter, I recommended that you consider extending the deadline once again, until the fall, and that the federal government extend the current benefit payments until October 2020, based on the 2018 income filings.

Can you comment on that? In our office, we process hundreds of these through our volunteer tax clinics, and many people are at risk of getting cut off from those significant monthly income supports.