Human Resources committee  I think, generally speaking, words are important—I would definitely agree with you—and the obligation of the “shall” provides an obligation on the part of the minister to disregard circumstances that could arise where it would be warranted, for example, to provide an individual w

Human Resources committee  What you want to ensure is that you reach out as quickly as possible, and not necessarily at the time of payment. For the department it's important that, as Mr. MacLeod explained, you take steps as early as possible to ensure that people are aware of the benefits, and this is wit

Human Resources committee  My first comment is that of course you'd have to examine the financial impact of doing that. In other words, you'd only decide that if there's a debt that's owed, you would go back retroactively to six years and no more. And right now there could be cases of deliberate fraud on t

Human Resources committee  I just want to comment on that, because I have the section. It was referencing the Auditor General's report concerning the overpayment policy: [It] sets guidelines for the collection process to ensure that beneficiaries repaying overpayments are treated consistently and equitab

Human Resources committee  I don't have any statistics in terms of the number of overpayments or the number of people who have overpayments in the system. I may have said on previous occasions that there are a number of circumstances that could lead to a situation of overpayment. To be clearer, and just

Human Resources committee  Well, it “shall be recoverable” within six years, so that would be the limitation.

Human Resources committee  Before we start our caucus, I will take a look, but I guess just to re-emphasize.... Let's take our caucus on that.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. I take the comments and I thank you for them. Right now, in terms of the overpayments, because the Canada Pension Plan and old age security benefits are over a person's lifetime, you can have a situation where there would be an overpayment, for example, that would ta

Human Resources committee  Yes, but since some individuals often travel from country to country, it's a relatively common phenomenon.

Human Resources committee  There are 67,000 females who receive the allowance and 5,000 males who receive the allowance.