CRA fires 20 employees, investigates hundreds for ‘improper’ claim of CERB benefits
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has laid off 20 employees while investigating about 600 others for applying for COVID-19 financial assistance while working for the agency.
CRA spokesperson Sylvie Branch confirmed on June 30 that the agency is investigating 600 of its employees for “improperly” claiming the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) of $2,000 a month while employed by the CRA, reported the National Post.
Ms. Branch also confirmed that the agency has terminated the employment of 20 of those employees, with the number likely to increase as the internal review continues.
The CERB was rolled out March 2020 to provide financial assistance to those who have lost their sources of income due to reasons related to the COVID-19 outbreak. People who had jobs but were not receiving income due to work interruptions due to COVID-19 were also eligible for CERB, but they had to earn less than $1,000 per month when filing their claims.
The CRA had previously announced it was reviewing the issue, though then-Tax Secretary Diane Lebouthillier did not disclose at the time the number of federal employees being laid off for defrauding the pandemic subsidy program.
“The specific number of terminations is too small to disclose without creating a privacy risk that could lead to one or more of the individuals being identified,” she said in a ministry investigation, first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
The CRA isn’t the only federal department to have fired its own employees for defrauding the CERB program.
Mary Crescenzi, assistant undersecretary of Service Canada’s Integrity Services Branch (ISB), told the House of Commons public accounts committee in February that 49 individuals had been fired from the agency for misrepresenting their situation when they applied for the benefit . The ISB is a program of Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC).
a Report 2022 of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada said that both the ESDC and CRA had “identified employees claiming COVID-19 benefits”. The report also noted that $4.6 billion in overpayments had been made to ineligible recipients of individuals’ benefits, while an estimated “$27.4 billion in payments to individuals and employers should be further investigated.”
As of April 2023, more than 600,000 Canadians who received CERB payments but did not qualify have failed to repay the debt, according to a ministry investigation released March 29, at the request of NDP MP Daniel Blaiki.
The CERB program closed in September 2020 and those who were still unemployed had their cases transferred to the labor insurance system.
Isaac Teo, Matthew Horwood and Peter Wilson contributed to this report.
