PACP Committee Report

Conservative Party of Canada Dissenting Report: Report 10, Specific COVID-19 Benefits, of the 2022 Reports 9 and 10 of the Auditor General of Canada

Background

Liberal government interference in design and implementation of the Canadian Emergency Wage Benefit and the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit resulted in at least 32 Billion dollars of taxpayers money being paid to ineligible recipients.

Political decisions made by the Cabinet overrode recommendations by the CRA on setting up more stringent pre-payment controls and instead forced the departments to dole out taxpayers’ dollars based upon self-attestation, a very limited prepayment control, despite this knowledge “this would lead to very large eligibility problems.”^[1]

Then-Minister of National Revenue, Diane LeBoutillier further politicized this issue by attacking the Auditor’s General’s integrity “The CRA's actual audits indicate that compliance with the subsidies was high and that the Auditor General's figure is exaggerated. That is not the Auditor General's fault. We all know that she was pressured by the opposition to produce this report.”^[2]

We are particularly disturbed by the Auditor General’s finding that “the department and agency’s approach to limit pre-payment controls, as well as the lack of timely data at the time of application, resulted in a significant amount of payments made to recipients who were ineligible or whose eligibility needs to be verified, and the department and agency did not develop rigorous and comprehensive plans to verify the eligibility of recipients.”^[3]

Despite the billions of dollars lost by the Government of Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency still questions the feasibility and economics to pursue ineligible claims.^[4]

The Conservative members of the committee recommend: 

Recommendation #1

That former Minister of National Revenue and current Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the Hon. Diane Lebouthillier, apologize to the Auditor General of Canada for her politically motivated attack on the Auditor General’s integrity.

Recommendation #2

The Canadian Revenue Agency immediately implement the Auditor General of Canada’s methodology that calculated levels of ineligibility for the COVID benefit wage subsidy.

Recommendation #3

That the Canadian Revenue Agency and Employment and Social Development Canada accept the findings of the Auditor General in its entirety and perform immediate and extensive post-payment verifications to identify payments made to ineligible recipients.

Recommendation #4

The Canadian Revenue Agency and Employment and Social Development end their post-payment verification delays and work expeditiously to retrieve all ineligible COVID financial aid.