Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question. During the pandemic, as you all know, the government took very decisive and unprecedented action to help Canadians get through this crisis, to save lives and help our economy, and it worked. But it was clear from the beginning, as I have said on many occasions, that the CRA would begin verifications once the time was right and once it had the required data to do so. Indeed, as you alluded to, verifications have begun and assessments are being made and continue to be made as to where the efforts of the CRA should be focused.

It will take some time to complete this work. The government does not accept the numbers that the Auditor General put forward in terms of the magnitude of the problem, but there was a problem, of course. In that regard, fraud will not be tolerated. The CRA will continue to use all of its tools to identify and recover the amounts that were disbursed to ineligible recipients.