Senator Loffreda: As you know, when Parliament adopted the bills that allowed for the creation, administration and distribution of various emergency COVID benefits, we also legislated timelines for the verification of eligibility. In some cases, it was only 36 months, and that deadline is fast approaching. Will the government consider extending this deadline in order to give the CRA the necessary time to adequately verify the distribution of its payment support to Canadians? I think it’s important to send the right message to Canadians that we value their hard-earned money and that the agency is serious and rigorous about this undertaking.

Hon. Tony Loffreda: My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate. Senator Gold, many are calling on the government to further investigate emergency COVID benefits and subsidy amounts paid to Canadians who may have inadvertently received money they were ineligible for. In her fall report, the Auditor General refers to some $32 billion in total payments, including $15.5 billion for the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy.

I appreciate that the CRA — the Canada Revenue Agency — does not agree with some of the Auditor General’s findings, but the point remains that the agency needs a plan of action to verify the millions of benefit applications it received. As the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, told our National Finance Committee:

. . . the CRA doesn’t deem it worthy, appropriate or worth the effort to go after an alleged $15 billion in potential overpayments . . . .

Can you assure us that the government is committed to recovering what could be millions or even billions of dollars that may have gone to ineligible candidates?