Perhaps, Madam Chair, I'll take a first cut at that.
You're right. Something that we consider as we look at people who owe money is what their situation is and what the situation is relative to the pandemic that's around us.
What we've tried to emphasize for all of our compliance collections people is that we need to be empathetic. Yes, to the extent that people got benefits they weren't eligible for, we need to take action, but we need to take that action with sensitivity, and what we call at the agency “people first”. Let's understand the situation. Let's make sure there is good communication.
You referenced at the beginning some confusion over whether the income threshold was gross or net. The government has acknowledged that. We at the CRA have said that our communication was not perfect in the early days, and so there have been actions taken with regard to that. More broadly, there would be people, for one reason or another, who mistakenly got benefits to which they weren't entitled, and we are trying to work our way through all of that as we get all the tax information.
People can be assured that as an organization we're trying to be as empathetic as we can to the person's situation vis-à-vis the pandemic or the economic consequences they suffered.