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?