Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2023

[Bob Hamilton]

If I understand your question correctly—and one of my colleagues may help—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The summer of 2020 was the first question.

[Bob Hamilton]

Think of the tax season that comes up, which will be starting shortly. As you say, the end of April is the end of it. Even in a normal year, we wouldn't have a lot of people's tax information for 2019 until after April 30 because people tend to back-end—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

When was it in the summer of 2020? Was it June 23 when summer starts or was it at the end of summer?

When exactly did you make that change?

[Bob Hamilton]

I don't know the precise date.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Would you get back to us?

The question I asked was about April 30. A huge majority of Canadians are filing electronically now. It's not like the old days where as long as you got it stamped by midnight on April 30, you were fine. On May 1, the huge majority of taxes have been filed electronically.

Would we not then be able to put better fencing around it than simple self-attestation? If not, why do we wait until summer?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have 30 seconds, Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

As you mentioned in your statement, intelligence came up that fraud was happening. Why the wait?

[Bob Hamilton]

I think it's important to remember—and I did reference this earlier—that year the filing season was extended to June because of the pandemic, so it came in later than it normally would. I think that's a key point as well.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We're out of time.

Let me just ask you to provide to the committee how many were actually sent on regular timing and how many were sent on the delayed time for tax filing.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Are you looking for a document to be tabled?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No. It's just some general information. I don't need the documents, just what percentage was on time on May 1 and how many took advantage of the delay.

[Bob Hamilton]

Mr. Chair, I'm not sure if one of my colleagues has an answer to that, but if we don't, we can get back to you.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Get back to us.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Let's do that.

Mr. Dong, you have the floor, please.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to confess to my colleague, Mr. McCauley, that I did file my taxes late that year.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

There's one.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I couldn't find my accountant, who wasn't working at the time. Anyway, I was going to point out that was a change that year.

I'm sure there are a lot of people watching this—this is a very important topic—including for individuals who may not be too sure of whether or not they should pay back the CERB or if they are responsible for the CEWS.

For the benefit of the public watching this, can Commissioner Hamilton tell us where people can find information if they do have these kinds of questions?

Would they have to pay a penalty for the overpayment? Is there any interest on the overpayment for individuals and businesses who find out through their accountants—because we're going into a tax filing season—that they were not 100% eligible?

[Bob Hamilton]

Thank you for the question.

If people think they need to repay, they should contact us and find the information. We will make arrangements to get repaid.

For the individuals, certainly the government indicated early on that if you received it in error there would be no interest or penalties that you would have to pay. That's an important consideration. You asked about interest and penalties.

We have information on our website. We have contact centres that people can call and talk to an agent to get more information. If I'm in this situation where I think I have received something that I'm not eligible for, how do I go about repaying it? We have actually received a lot of repayments already from those kinds of people. They should look to our sources of information.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Maybe later on can you quantify for the committee how much you have recovered.

[Bob Hamilton]

Yes. We have those numbers. I don't have them at my fingertips.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

You can do it after.

[Bob Hamilton]

Definitely. A lot of people have come to us voluntarily and repaid. They understood after that they weren't eligible for it.

I almost think I have the number, but I don't want to give you the wrong number.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

That sounds good.

I have two other questions.

I notice that on page 15, the Auditor General's report says, “Missing data for assessment of Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy effectiveness”.

I remember you said that, when it comes to CERB, individuals do have to submit their SIN and this personal information that helps CRA to check later on. Why was it not required by the Canada emergency wage subsidy program that the employer submit the personal information of the employee who ultimately benefited from this program?

[Bob Hamilton]

That goes back to the issue that we've talked about several times here today: the speed of getting these programs in place and delivered. It was felt at the time that if we did force employers to give us the SIN numbers, that was really going to slow down the process, and we weren't going to be able to get the benefits out in time.

I may ask Gillian to elaborate on that, but that's essentially it. In a world.... It might have been nicer to have the SIN numbers, but we just didn't feel like we had the time to do that. Again, we knew we would be able to come back and verify after the fact, so to speak.