Mr. Speaker, with regard to payment accuracy figures included in note 10 of the employment insurance operating account financial statements, the payment accuracy information shared in the 2021 public accounts of Canada and included in note 10 of the financial statement represents an estimate of “potential” over/under payments, not actual established overpayments that are being collected. This note is included in the financial statements to provide users with an overview of the operations of the programs and a measure of accuracy of the benefit payments. Specifically, it should be noted that using a monetary unit sampling, MUS, methodology, the EI payment accuracy review program, PAAR, estimates the accuracy of EI benefit payments. The quality services division reviews several hundred files each year to identify undetected errors that could result in possible mispayments, which are either underpayment or overpayment. Based on the sampling method, MUS, and the observance and distribution of the mispayments across the sample, various statistics are generated for the primary goal of testing whether mispayments are below the 5% tolerance limit, with 95% accuracy set as the service standard.
In response to (a), the EI PAAR sample, or the number of files to be reviewed, is established in a manner to estimate mispayments at the overall program level. It does not include sufficient number of items for each subtype, i.e., income support program. As such, these figures are not available.
In response to (i), the actual recorded amounts are disclosed in note 3 of the audited employment insurance operating account financial statements.
The supplementary statement is in section 4, “Consolidated accounts as at March 31”, volume I, “Public Accounts of Canada 2021”, receiver general for Canada, PSPC, Canada.ca: https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/recgen/cpc-pac/2021/vol1/s4/es-ss-eng.html.
In response to (ii), the amount recorded as overpayments in the financial statements is $754 million and is based on actuals and estimated accruals. This represents potentially 388,000 claimants.
In response to (b), as indicated in the response to question (a), the EI PAAR sample is not large enough to provide this data.