Mr. Speaker, with respect to the above-noted question, what follows is the response from the CRA for the period April 26, 2020 to March 29, 2022, the date of the question.
In response to part (a), the term “employer” in this context includes, but is not limited to, the following per the CEWS eligibility criteria: corporations, partnerships, proprietorships, charities, non-profit organizations, etc.
Based on the information available to the CRA, of the 446,871 employers who received payments under the Canada emergency wage subsidy, CEWS, 750 employers, or 0.16%, have subsequently filed for bankruptcy proceedings.
In response to part (b), based on the information available to the CRA, of the $100.65 billion in subsidies approved under the Canada emergency wage subsidy, CEWS, the total amount of CEWS payments received by the employers identified in part (a) is $145,928,476, or 0.14%.
In response to part (c), eligible employers’ entitlement to this wage subsidy is based on a decline in their revenues and the salary or wages actually paid to employees. For the above-noted 750 employers in part (a), 352 owed back taxes to the CRA when they were sent the CEWS payments. The Canada emergency wage subsidy was a key measure to ensure that workers were able to count on a source of income through the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to part (d), the total amount of back taxes owed by the employers identified in part (c) was $25,926,888.04.
In response to parts (e) and (f), as the protection of the taxpayer information is of utmost importance, the confidentiality provisions of the acts administered by the CRA prevent the disclosure of taxpayer information related to specific cases.