Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to now move to what I think is probably top of mind for most Canadians who took CERB, the fact that the recommendation by government members was to apply. Even if, in some cases, the eligibility criteria might not have been clear and maybe even arbitrary at times, they were told to apply.
It is a fact that we see messaging right across the board to regular Canadians who were suffering and who needed help.... Part of a government's responsibility, as the Auditor General puts it, is to be very clear. In this process of recouping or clawing back some of this, I think it's also fair to talk about the reality that they were encouraged to do this. They were encouraged to apply, even at times when asking their own MPs whether they were eligible or not. At times when they weren't, they were told to continue to apply, that this was an emergency, that we were all in this together and that we were going to get through it together.
To be frank, it seems as though we're prepared to abandon many Canadians, even at a time when the affordability crisis right now is pinching harder than in many years past. It's true that the major effects of the pandemic on our economy are certainly passing, but not for everyone. For many regular working-class Canadians, it's only making things worse.
My question is for the Auditor General.
How do you square that circle and the fact that the advice to the public at that time was to apply and to make sure they had the support they needed rather than going into poverty? I know your report makes some mention of that, but it's not explicit to the fact that government incentivized people's applications to this program.
How do we actually balance that with the reality that we need to be fair with our tax laws, and also the reality that Canadians were told to apply even at times when the eligibility criteria may have been confusing? Your audit didn't go into detail on the encouragement or process of the communication of this program. Why not?