My Question in Question Period Today | Feb 2, 2023
See my question on the Liberals not following through on their commitments to review 15.5 Billion in pandemic benefits. Unfortunately, the answer gets the facts wrong. Conservatives voted in 2020 to PAUSE these pandemic benefit reviews, during the Liberal pandemic restrictions, not to just say it “wouldn’t be worth the effort” like the Head of the CRA said last week. (See the below video for my question and below text for the CTV article on this issue.)
In December, Hogan’s office tabled a performance audit that identified an estimated $4.6 billion in benefit over-payments to ineligible individuals. The audit also highlighted approximately $27.4 billion in payments to individuals and employers that should be “investigated further” for potential ineligibility, including $15.5 billion that was paid out through the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) program, which was the topic of Thursday’s committee meeting.
In my view, based on what we’ve seen so far, it wouldn’t be worth the effort,” Hamilton said of investigating all of the $15.5 billion in potential ineligible wage subsidies outlined by the auditor general. “Based on our evidence to date, we see businesses generally complying… We have some pockets of people that have intentionally misled and we’re pursuing those.”
“It was one of the worst moments of my political life,” Morneau writes. “During the period when the largest government expenditures as a portion of GDP were made in the shortest time since the advent of World War II, calculations and recommendations from the Ministry of Finance were basically disregarded in favour of winning a popularity contest.”