PACP Committee Report

The New Democratic Party of Canada has deep disagreements with many aspects of this report.

However, New Democrats strongly support recommendation 5’s call on the Canada Revenue Agency to produce a cost estimate for a COVID-19 benefit repayment amnesty for Canadians whose income was under Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off. We also emphasize that recommendation 103 of the Standing Committee on Finance’s March 2023 pre-budget consultation report called for a CERB repayment amnesty for Canadians living at or near the low-income measure.  Sadly, this call was not reflected in the 2023 federal budget.  New Democrats are pleased that the Public Accounts Committee of Canada has called on the government to produce a cost estimate for a low-income repayment amnesty.

New Democrats profoundly disagree with recommendation 6 – which calls on the Canada Revenue Agency to confirm that they have functionality to apply GST credits to COVID‑19 individual benefit debts.  These GST clawbacks will have devastating effects on some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of Canadian society.  It is also our opinion that this recommendation is premature given that the committee recognized the need to call on the government to cost a repayment amnesty for low-income Canadians in recommendation 5 of this report.

The New Democratic Party of Canada strongly believes that the issue of the repayment of individual COVID-19 benefits is not a settled question of program performance and public accounting, but rather an urgent political issue that must be debated by parliamentarians. At a time when millions of working families are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads, it is grotesque that the limited capacity of the Canada Revenue Agency should be directed at clawing back emergency pandemic aid from low-income people instead of ending the rampant tax evasion from corporate Canada and the ultra-wealthy that costs Canadians tens of billions of dollars every year according to economists and taxation experts. 

New Democrats will keep pushing for a COVID-19 benefits low-income repayment amnesty and for the appropriate use of the Canada Revenue Agency’s resources as part of our efforts to build a fair taxation system.