Public Accounts Committee on April 15th, 2021

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Okay.

[Frank Vermaeten]

We can certainly get the precise number, if that would be helpful.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I think it would be helpful. I think it reflects the integrity and the robustness of the system and, frankly, the honesty of Canadians —whether they were eligible or ineligible, whether they were moved to a new program or whether they actually in fact rebegan employment—because of the way the system actually worked. Frankly, I think it speaks to how robust the program was.

Also, in terms of the era of digitization, we spoke to that—I know that Mr. Sabia has left—in terms of the way the CRA had to pivot from collecting taxes and funding government services and programs to actually deploying proceeds or benefits to Canadians. How easy or how complex was that pivot? In your view, how does it speaks to future programs, potentially, and to what people speak to, such as a digital ID? Just how complex was that pivot for the CRA?

[Bob Hamilton]

There are two points that I would make.

One, even before the pandemic we had experience with delivering benefits for the government such as the child benefit and the GST credit.

It wasn't completely foreign territory to us. We have a very significant benefits delivery part and we deliver a number of provincial benefits as well. In that sense, the pivot wasn't as big as you might think it was, but I think the particular nature of this program and the speed with which it had to be implemented were indeed unique. We had to do a lot of very fast thinking about how we could build a whole new system—because we didn't already have this benefit—to deliver these programs, and then, as we talked throughout this conversation, there was the issue of how much could we rely on upfront validation versus our normal compliance at the back end.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Hamilton.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sorbara.

Colleagues, it's 1:05, and some of our colleagues indicated they would not be able to stay past one o'clock.

I am going to test the room and see if in fact you are able to stay until 1:30. I think we have secured our technicians until then. If not, colleagues, I am somewhat reluctant to move ahead without our colleagues being able to participate. I certainly will adhere to the will of the committee.

Go ahead, Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I am somewhat disappointed that we lost out on the deputy minister from the Department of Finance. I feel that some of my questioning around their analysis and how they got to decisions would be important to my better understanding this report overall.

I'm curious whether there are other staff members from the department who could answer. I see that the video was off for—oh, there we go; you're still there.

Okay, never mind. We're good. I'm sure we can get adequate answers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Colleagues, are we prepared to continue for the next 15 to 25 minutes?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, I would like to ask a question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Yes, Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Will we meet in camera at the end of the meeting to organize the committee's work, or are we only talking about the question and answer period with witnesses?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

I do not believe that there was an in camera portion scheduled for today.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Okay. I will have to leave, but my colleagues will be there.

Thank you.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Chair, I managed to move my appointments around, so I can stay until 1:25 p.m.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

All right.

Go ahead, Mr. Blois.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Madam Chair, I was unable to so I have to leave in 10 minutes.

In terms of coverage, I can either try to work with the whip's office or...hopefully we don't have any votes and it won't be necessary and we can carry on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

All right. Thank you, colleagues. We will continue on with the line of questioning.

We will move to the next round, which is six minutes.

Mr. Berthold, you indicated that you had to leave, but you are the next speaker. Did you want to continue with your questioning?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Lawrence will do it, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

All right. Thank you.

Mr. Lawrence, you have six minutes.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I just want to assure Mr. Blois that if he deems coverage necessary, that's fine. However, on my honour as a member, I will not be calling a vote in the last session, nor will anyone from our party, in the true spirit of public accounts. He can leave and rest assured.

I want to go through a specific case because I think it's actually emblematic and symptomatic of a bunch of things that went wrong. All that being said, I want this to be based on my knowledge that civil servants worked extremely hard and that a lot of these people on this call worked around the clock to make this happen. However, I want to express the challenges faced by a constituent.

This constituent applied for the CERB because based on the communications, he thought, as many did, that he was eligible. It turned out, due to a technicality, that he wasn't eligible. His accountant actually informed him of that. It wasn't through audit or otherwise.

He went to the CRA website—he has it all documented—three separate times, and three separate times, the CRA website was down. He finally gave up and said, “I'm going to do my duty as a citizen and make sure this money gets back before the end of the year.“ He then went to the bank, where he was told, “Oh, yeah; you just pay that to ESDC.” He paid it to ESDC, and then he got a nasty letter from CRA saying he wasn't eligible to get this money, he hadn't paid it back, and he had to pay it back now. On top of that, they were taxing him on that money. He then contacted ESDC and said, “I want that money back, please. I told CRA I paid it, but it's at ESDC.”

ESDC has no idea. We're now in week eight of trying to get that money back. We've had no response. I've personally talked to two or three different civil servants. He has talked to about 15 different civil servants. He has called the CRA more times than you can imagine. He's been put on hold for hours and he's been hung up on multiple times.

I bring this to your attention because there are a number of challenges. At one point, the official laughed and said, “Oh, there are thousands of people with that problem.”

He's tried to do the right thing all the way along. He handed $14,000 to the government and it won't give it back to him. Could someone from either the CRA or ESDC comment on that, please?

[Cliff C. Groen]

Thank you for the question. I'll go first, and maybe colleagues from CRA would follow

I very much regret to hear the challenges that your constituent has gone through. Certainly we try—and in the vast majority of situations are able—to provide very timely service to Canadians. That is what we are here for. I sincerely regret hearing in particular about your constituent. Perhaps through the committee you would be able to provide us with the specific name of that client. I can absolutely commit that we will follow up directly with him to try to address his situation as quickly as possible.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you. I will do so. Obviously I didn't want to share it publicly, but I will share it with your agency.

The second part of it is that we know there is some negligence—I would suspect there is a lot—and maybe some fraud as well in there. What is the recovery rate we are targeting? From the Auditor General and from the agencies, how much of the CERB money are we estimating that we will recover?

[Karen Hogan]

I guess I can go first and then hand it over.

I want to say that it's my job to be concerned about the use of public funds. I'm always concerned when payments are made in error. I acknowledge, however, that the pandemic complicates this situation.

The decision on when and how to collect is one that the government needs to make, but I believe that there should be a follow-up and action should be taken. This is why we will go and audit the efforts of both the Canada Revenue Agency and Employment and Social Development Canada in that respect.

With that, I'll hand it over to one of the deputy ministers to talk about expectations.

[Bob Hamilton]

I'm happy to go first, Madam Chair.

In response to the question, what would say is that I don't have a particular recovery rate in mind at the moment. However, as the Auditor General has said, we also care very much about good use of public money. We will be looking to make sure the money went to the appropriate places.

On the question just raised about timing, the other thing we have to keep in mind as we identify cases in which the money might have gone to the wrong place is that our compliance efforts need to be sensitive to the situation people are in right now. We need to operate not only in the right way but also in a way that recognizes the sensitivity of the economic situation that families are currently facing. We'll be balancing that as we go forward.

We will also be looking to make sure—as we always do—that on the back end, we verify and identify where things may have happened inappropriately, and we'd look to correct them.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Do I have any time left, Madam Chair?