Public Accounts committee  It's hard for me to see a better way at the time, recognizing where we were. If you look at what other countries have done around the world in that same circumstance, they adopted their own variants of these kinds of programs. Could some things have been done a bit better on our part or others'?

Public Accounts committee  We made every possible effort. We determined that there was an increase in fraud because there were greater incentives to defraud. We implemented a number of fraud detection measures. There are different types of fraud. Some are more serious than others. We froze a number of accounts in instances for which we suspected there had been fraud.

Public Accounts committee  I would say that it was, obviously, very important to Canadians, but that's reflected in the attestation-based approach of the government in trying to find ways to get the money to the people who needed it as quickly as possible. We were in an extraordinary situation. People were, as you said, in need of these benefits, and one of our main jobs at that moment was to get them out as efficiently as we could.

Public Accounts committee  No. We had to build it, basically. You can take bits and pieces from things we have done, but essentially, that was part of the challenge for us. In a matter of weeks, we had to get this system up—in an area that we wouldn't normally be administering in—and get the payments out.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, it was possible because key for us at the CRA is also the integrity of the system. Yes, we need to be timely and to serve the needs of Canadians, but we have to be concerned about the integrity in the system. We did have some prepayment controls up front, and we actually changed them over time, reflecting what we were seeing out there.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I can start that one, and Marc may.... As we said last week and now again today, the compliance efforts are still in the early stages. We are going to be continuing these out to 2025. It's very difficult to know what will be left at the end of the day, because our risk-based approach does get adjusted as we move along.

Public Accounts committee  We can come back to you with more information on that. We do have figures at our disposal about how much has been repaid now and how much we've looked at. I mentioned last week, in the context of the wage subsidy that we've done over.... Again, it's a graduated approach. We look at everything at the beginning just to see what's there, and then we do audits.

Public Accounts committee  I don't have the number handy in front of me. I recall the Order Paper question. I expect that what's in there is correct.

Public Accounts committee  I don't have that estimate in front of me, but I can get that to you. I know that we're planning to have our postpayment verifications extend out to 2025, so we would have to compute that number based on that.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure if one of my colleagues has that figure in front of them. If not, we can definitely get it to you. We're just talking about the individual benefits here. Is that...?

Public Accounts committee  I'll turn it to Marc Lemieux, my colleague.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to discuss the Auditor General's report entitled “Report 10: Specific COVID-19 Benefits”. You have already introduced my colleagues who are with me here at the table. As I stated at my appearance before this committee last week, I want to thank the Auditor General and her team for their essential and diligent work.

Government Operations committee  Well, we had very good discussions with the union every step of the way as we tried to develop our business plan. We've been walking this balance between keeping people separated and at home as much as possible while trying to get the very important work done. We worked very much hand in hand with the unions.

Government Operations committee  Sure. I'm happy to come in, Mr. Chair, if you can hear me.

Government Operations committee  To understand this, I think, without going on too long—but it is a very interesting story for the agency—you can think about the unprecedented volume of demands we had and the strain it was going to put on not only our call centres but on processing at other parts of the agency.