The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced it fired 20 employees—and is investigating upwards of 600 others—who improperly received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) during the pandemic.
“As the CRA is responsible for administering the Income Tax Act and many COVID-19 benefits, the highest standard of employee conduct must be upheld,” a CRA spokesperson told CTV.
“The CRA understands the importance of transparency and integrity. The CRA also ensures that both Canadians and its employees are aware that the CRA takes any form of wrongdoing very seriously.”
The agency will discipline employees it discovers inappropriately accepted CERB payments on a case- by-case basis, and penalties include revocation of employees’ reliability status, which is a condition of employment, the agency spokesperson added.
“The most egregious cases of misconduct result in the most severe disciplinary measures, up to and including termination of employment.”
In the wake of the pandemic, the CERB program was rolled out to support Canadians who lost their jobs or had been furloughed with up to $2,000 monthly. However, late last year, Canada’s auditor general estimated the federal government overpaid Canadians by $4.6 billion.
The CERB program is estimated to have distributed $211 billion in taxpayer funds during the pandemic.
The CRA maintains that, because it employs more than 60,000 people, of whom only about 600 are implicated—less than 1% of its work—Canadians’ confidence in the agency shouldn’t waver.
“The confidence and trust that individuals and businesses have in the CRA is a cornerstone of Canada’s tax system and this is why the CRA has a duty to administer all benefits fairly, to safeguard and protect taxpayer information, and deliver results to Canadians,” the spokesperson said.
The CRA’s investigation into employees who accepted CERB payments is far from unique. In February, Employment and Social Development Canada terminated 49 employees for taking CERB payments despite having retained employment during the pandemic.
In an interview with True North last month, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation Franco Terrazzano criticized the federal government’s oversight of the CERB program, as well as the CRA’s seeming indifference to fraudulent payments, which he estimated are exorbitant.
“They put money out the door with no proper guardrails,” Terrazzano said. “Now $32 billion in suspicious payments is out the door and the CRA can’t be bothered to fully investigate it.”
