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Context: House Hansard - 147 - Dec/13/22

Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Dec/13/22 6:33:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on Tuesday last week, the Auditor General released an absolutely damning report on the government's COVID-19 programs. This is report 10 from the Auditor General. This report chronicled mismanagement, waste and a lack of focus leading to tens of billions of dollars in government waste. Let us be very clear: We are not talking about the policy of the COVID support programs. This was a policy that, in principle, all parties supported and it is not the Auditor General's mandate to critique the government's policy, but rather to analyze the effectiveness of implementation. That is whether the actions of government lined up with the stated policy goals. The Auditor General pointed out that the government made a policy decision not to have an effective pre-disbursement review. It basically relied on an attestation model, an honour system, where people would say they met the criteria and they would get the benefits. Many Canadians were honest and accurate in how they filled those out. Generally, we say there should be some kind of verification mechanism, either before or afterward. The government said that it needed to get these dollars out the door quickly in terms of these benefits, so it did not do the advance verification, but it said it would do verification after the fact. It would follow up and see if the money went to the right people, and if it did not go to the right people, it would follow up in the appropriate fashion. The government is now saying it is not going to do those after-the-fact reviews and verifications in every case. For much of the money that the government spent in various COVID-19 support programs, there was no checking before the money went out and no checking after the money was received. This means people could simply attest that they were eligible for benefits. They got cheques as a result and there was no verification. The Auditor General was able, based on data the government already had available, to assess what indicators there were of whether people who did not meet the requirements of various programs ended up getting money anyway. Here is what she found. Incredibly, she found that $4.6 billion went to ineligible recipients. That means people who were not eligible for these programs still got money to the tune of $4.6 billion. Another $27.4 billion went to individuals who, on the face of it, did not meet the program criteria where the Auditor General conservatively says further investigation is required. There were cases, for instance, where individuals did not meet the income requirements, yet still received CERB. The total of certainly ineligible or almost certainly ineligible, based on the Auditor General's analysis of data in the government's own possession, came to $32 billion. Some $32 billion of COVID-19 benefits went out to individuals who were not eligible for those benefits. Again, we are not talking about whether offering this support was a good idea. We are talking about whether the government should be held accountable for over $30 billion going to those who did not meet the stated criteria for those programs. The Auditor General is recommending in this report that the government follow up, get to the bottom of this and track down that money. The government does not agree, does not support it and will not implement this recommendation of the Auditor General. It says, on the final page of the report, that it will not follow up with every one of these cases, as the Auditor General recommends. The response of the Minister of National Revenue when this issue was raised in the House was to impugn the Auditor General's independence. The Minister of National Revenue got up in this House and said that the Auditor General made the decisions and the recommendations because of pressure from the opposition, which is a totally outrageous attack on a strong, independent public servant by the government simply to cover up its own incompetence. The government wasted $30 billion. It should be held accountable for that waste and it should not be attacking the Auditor General.

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Context: House Hansard - 147 - Dec/13/22

Mr. Peter Fragiskatos (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue, Lib.)

Dec/13/22 6:37:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that was an interesting speech, as always, from our colleague. I would remiss if I did not begin tonight by speaking about the late Jim Carr, a colleague to all of us and a friend to many. He was someone who served with distinction provincially and federally, among so many other different pursuits, and who had a very impressive life. He was a mentor to many MPs who began with him in 2015, and words of advice given by him over the years will not be forgotten, certainly not by myself, not by anyone. I listened with interest to the hon. member, and we thank the Auditor General for her report, which was tabled last week. The government affirms her independence and integrity, which is true of the minister and true of myself. As I said, this is a very important office, and we affirm all of those important principles. In listening to my hon. colleague though, I wonder if he actually read the report or only those parts he could use to his political advantage. First of all, the report makes clear that, without the emergency programs put in place, the poverty rate in Canada would have doubled. Particularly important was the CERB, but there was also the wage subsidy. It is also true that we would have seen th massive economic contraction that was impacting the country at the outset of the pandemic simply continue. In 2020, we saw GDP contract by 17%. Again, this is all in the report. I am sure my friend has the report at hand, if he has not looked at it already, which I suspect he has not, but he can easily bring it up. The report makes clear that, by November 2021, the economy had come back to prepandemic levels. Again, that is because of the emergency programs that were put in place by the the government and supported by all parties in the House. Interesting also is what was said by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who recently made it clear that, were it not for the programs, the results for the country would have been “catastrophic”. We would have seen mass bankruptcies, and it would have resulted in significant human costs. Again, I leave that for the consideration of the hon. member. Underpinning all of the emergency programs, of course, was the attestation-based approach put in place by the government to ensure that funds needed by Canadians, either individuals, families or businesses, were dispensed very quickly, and I am thinking of CERB, the wage subsidy and various other programs. The attestation-based approach made that very possible. Verification is certainly the objective, but it comes after the fact, which is about the only part of the speech from my hon. colleague across the way that I agree with. Verification was not possible at the beginning. It had to come after the fact because of the unique circumstance, which was a crisis. A crisis necessitates specific approaches tailored to the moment. This is why the government took the approach that it did. The work is ongoing to verify whether or not individuals, businesses and others were actually in need of the various supports that were received. Yes, there is respectful disagreement on the $27.4 billion between the CRA and the Auditor General, which is, again, a respectful disagreement over calculating the wage subsidy eligibility over GST revenue loss versus general revenue loss. That is a technical matter that will be sorted out. Over 800,000 notices of redetermination have been given to individuals. Thousands more will be sent. The work of the CRA continues on these matters. It is very serious about ensuring fiscal responsibility and verification.

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Context: House Hansard - 147 - Dec/13/22

Mr. Garnett Genuis

Dec/13/22 6:41:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is trying to constantly shift this into a debate about whether or not the emergency benefits were a good policy. As he pointed out, all parties supported providing emergency supports during COVID. However, the question is not whether these emergency benefits were required and were valuable. The question is whether the government was right to pay tens of billions of dollars to people who were not eligible for the programs. That is, the House agreed to specific criteria for these programs, and tens of billions of dollars, according to the Auditor General, very likely went to individuals who were not eligible for those programs. The government said that it had to get the money out quickly at the beginning, fair enough, but the bargain was that there would have to be clear, effective, after-the-fact verification in every case. Either we have to do the verification up front, which is normally what happens, or we have to do some kind of verification after the fact. However, the government has said clearly, in response to the Auditor General's recommendation, that it will not, in fact, do this verification in every case, and the minister attacked the Auditor General on this.

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