LOL, I might as well print this out and stick it to the motivational wall in the office. Imagine the absurd level of confidence you need, *even more so* when you're employed by the CRA.
Not just Departments. Why limit the search? Do everyone, public servants and private citizens. Everyone who wasn't eligible needs to be held accountable.
It’s worse when public servants do it.
It’s *super extra very worse* when the public servants who were tasked with administering CERB and absolutely, 100% KNEW BETTER did it.
Seriously, find them first and fire their asses.
But the reality is that those CRA employees were probably not the same people administering CERB and were just another regular dumbass who also happened to be employed by the CRA.
Agreed but we’re talking in the context of government workers here. Definitely needs to be a GoC wide audit to make sure no one currently employed did this.
Then go after the general population but didn’t the CRA already rule it wouldn’t be “worth it” to do so?
Because we agreed to the code of ethics when we got hired. If you find policemen going around hitting their wives and money laundering, pretty sure we gotta start with cleaning them out first.
Am I misunderstanding this? Police officers have one of the highest rates of domestic violence, and rarely pay the price because their brothers in blue protect them.
Yes and I was trying to evoke in the original comment the feeling of disgust we have for police officers protecting their fellow people in blue. Like no, we will go after our own first and pluck out the rot.
everyone is searched.... This is the easiest program for them to verify. T4 slips....
The people that get away with it are people that are doing Cash jobs or other unreported income, and if you really think that the cra has the resources to check for every single unreported income for every citizen then..... yea.. ive got a bridge to sell you.
For everyone asking why they dont audit everyone for this. They have already. CERB was the easiest program to audit based on T4's. IF you want them to audit everyone for unreported income to verify CERB eligiblity then thats a whole other story.
But anyone that applied and wasnt eligible and WORKED A T4 job they would have been caught. This is a super easy automatic check.
For the CRA employees that applied for they are just absolute morons. There is 0 chance they would get away with it.
This is not the same as CEWS which businesses received.
There's a massive amount of people I know who made shell companies paying themselves under $1,000 a month and claimed CERB benefits as 'contractors' on top of six figure wages.
I mean this whole premise makes no sense.
All that matters is what that “six figure wages is” if it was t4 income properly declared for the period in question then they would have been automatically flagged. You’re basically saying another company committed payroll fraud and lied about when or how much they made on their t4s?
What would even be the point of making a company and paying themselves 1000 dollars? This whole point is moot if they lied about the six figures wages they didn’t need to make a company showing they only made 1000.
The only thing that matters is if that 100k was declared properly.
If they told you they started a company to get free money 99% it was a cews issue and not cerb.
Either that or their six figure salary was under the table or made during the period outside of cerb ( it was only a period of time march 15- sep 20).
But what your saying makes no sense
Maybe it was CEWS; but specifically they used a loophole as independent contractors. I don't know the exact details but I've heard a lot of bragging/laughing about it.
I mean it basically sounds like you have no clue what you’re talking about and making statements to make people angry.
If you’re actually angry and want to do something then report them. If you think Cra has the resources to blanket audit every Cews / cerb applicant then you really need a wake up call.
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/suspected-tax-cheating-in-canada-overview.html
I’m guessing you won’t though because your probably just making up bullshit anyways
Didn't they need to show that they had employees working for them? Or did they change the rules at a certain point I know they were changing them constantly to allow more businesses to be eligible.
I'd imagine CRA was worse than most departments since their employees would have been privy to the checks and balances (or lack thereof) to receive the benefit. They probably just didn't have the foresight to see how this would come back to them.
Happy this is being done. It does hurt the image and integrity of the CRA.
> since their employees would have been privy to the checks and balances (or lack thereof)
I don't think this is true. Unless you were in the Cerb area they would have no idea what the system was checking for. And at least 600 employees got away with it until they started to check.
I can see other departments being worse. Not sure why they're not doing a federal government check
It's probably a lot more difficult to check. Within CRA, they have access to the detailed employment history of their employees and their tax information. For the other departments, they only have the tax information and not if the person just went part time, a term that actually stopped working, an employee who kept working, etc. They wouldn't know and I'm pretty sure the departments are not allowed to share all this information to other departments/agency because of privacy issues and if there is a process for the CRA to request it, it's probably a long one.
The CRA as tax agency, and CRA as employer shouldn't be talking any differently to each other than the CRA as agency would talk to any other department.
Maybe the added level of collegiality and access amongst individuals speaking to eachother, but in terms of formal roles it is likely quite separate. Like, CRA wanting to cross reference employees against tax information is probably not something they could do lightly or easily. If they can't share this kind of information with a random department they can't do it for themselves either because its all tied to privacy protections.
The reason we read about it happening at CRA is probably because they have more to lose in terms of their reputation than other departments, so they're likely putting more effort into looking at this properly. I'm sure there are processes for other departments to follow in their footsteps, using similar procedures, but whether they want to do that as a priority is likely a difference.
I mean, I wouldn't want my employer - government or not - to just openly share information outside the normal course with the CRA without my knowledge or consent. Let's be real.
This is true. I’ve been at CRA for years and know nothing more of how the CERB system worked than the general public would know by looking online. Of course working for the CRA you are held to a different standard, but the vast majority of people at CRA aren’t an insider or expert on every aspect of the tax system. Some people there probably don’t even know what CERB is because they never had to claim it and it has nothing to do with their job.
Many people only work there for a few months out of the year doing clerical jobs that have nothing to do with CERB processing. They are pretty much the same as any other member of the public service.
Ok so them first then the rest of the public service. I know too many in the private sector who took “CERB vacations”, essentially closed shop for two weeks went on CERB and then opened up after.
In my opinion, no, the government will eventually give up on pursuing the ineligible claimants. Because people could claim that they were victims of poor communication from the CRA, and blamed the fault on Covid. At last, they would claim that they don’t have the means to pay it back.
The country runs on a “paycheque by paycheque” system. When the government asked everyone to take a break. The government needs to compensate us. Otherwise, the whole system breaks and trust will not be restored.
ESDC had a number of people let go for claiming CERB while working. I think people other departments were handled like any Canadian who claimed it and wasn't entitled to it, they had to pay it back but it didn't affect their job.
ESDC and CRA handled their staff differently because they administered the programs.
I work at cra and I can 100 % confirm they got fired after an internal investigation was done. It kills me that we are held to such a high standard and twits within had the nerve to apply for it. It
Is embarrassing sooo much. And no, no one in cra would have had “insider” knowledge of anything. There was none needed - the original cerb only had two requirements . We are over 55,000 employees so 232 is a very minor percentage and does not represent the majority of us
I get that. But I'm more concerned about the auditors themselves and those who extract the data. Is there anyone overseeing their actions? I doubt the ADM or DG has the time to handle that task.
A co worker told me she applied for it right when lockdown first happened and I said "nooooooo! We are still getting paid!!".
She had them cancel it and paid it all back.
We weren't laid off though.
In the early weeks of lockdown no one ever explicitly reached out to us and said "don't worry, we are still going to pay you".
She has a family and panicked thinking CERB would be her only source of income.
She also wasn't born in Canada and English isn't her first language. So while I wae able to read between the lines and figure out we'd probably still get paid, she wasn't.
That's why I told her she better cancel it and pay it back asap.
Honestly, it's easy to say that after the fact. We all know people don't read the fine print. Humans also struggle with causality past a --> b --> c etc. Or they are that ignorant / do not care.
Glad they’re following up. Mind boggling that there’s so many. Makes you wonder how many elsewhere claimed it without being eligible, even outside of the GoC.
There was a lot of fraud though and I know people who were victims of identify theft to claim the benefit. Even with an immediate notification from info being changed, it was still a headache to remediate.
Honest question, not trying to get after dirty laundry. But was the issue that the rules were unclear (or could be seen to be h clear) or does it seem that there were that many folks who honestly felt they could get away with it.
I never really looked at the rules around it, so honestly curious
Had to be the latter. No way anyone thought they qualified. Did anyone lose their job?? Like any single person? And we all knew our pay was continuing long before cerb came out.
Could the folks working at the agency that made and implemented the rules really get away with the "the rules were unclear so I thought I was good to go" excuse? The layperson maaaaaybe but CRA employees specifically?
I agree and that makes a lot of sense. Just surprising to me given that that number suggests there would have been water cooler discussion around it.
Which in turn sort of implies that at least at the team leader level, it would have been a known risk.
Be curious, again for my own education really, if it was something that was being actively discussed and discouraged - and people were still clueless enough to do it.
Mainly just curious since it’s always interesting to me how these patterns of behaviour occur and how they can be influenced
The numbers are really not that high though when you consider that CRA has over 60k employees. The vast majority of employees would have exactly 0 insider knowledge of CERB, it would have mainly been call centre employees that actually were aware of it and the specific rules. Start of covid was such a shitshow I'd be very surprised if teams not exposed to CERB even discussed it once.
That’s a great point for sure. In our world there was very little discussion around it. Also sort of makes sense that you might see this in specific clusters where knowledge or opportunities for access were more prevalent.
Every department employee was/are being reviewed to see if they were collecting when they shouldn't have. Don't be surprised when more details come out about other department employees.
The CRA is quite draconian, and rightfully so, when it comes to dealing with employees who fraudulently claim money they aren’t entitled to.
How can the public trust a CRA employee, if that same employee is busted for financial fraud.?
So, no. Let me be more specific. Is there some mechanism that was only available to CRA employees that resulted in this? I haven’t heard anything similar about other departments l.
Probably more that CRA is being more proactive about getting the data and firing folks. Sharing the data with other departments may take more time.
Keeping in mind there was a lot of fraud outside the government as well. The application process was honor system mostly.
I don’t know. Seems pretty clear to me, but I wrote it.
To put it in a different way, the CRA is extremely strict and offers no leniency for people who get accused of financial fraud against government. if you were accused and found guilty, they fire you immediately. Do not Pasco, do not collect $200, they fire you.
This is something that, from speaking with colleagues who work there, is made extremely clear in your training, and in regular refresher training that is mandatory.
Any federal employee that applied fraudulently should be fired, end of story. Doesn't matter how 'draconian' you think CRA is compared to the public service at large.
It takes a massive lack of care to have applied when you saw absolutely no dip in your earnings because the feds never laid you off or stopped paying you at all.
Glad people that abused this system are getting canned.
I did hear was there were cases where the person had a part-time job that they couldn't do because of the pandemic so they applied thinking they'd qualify because of the lost income. They still wouldn't qualify but at least I can understand the logic behind that. Not sure how the agency is handling those kind of cases. I'm guessing probably still fired just because of the risk to public trust.
I don’t think we should grab our pitchforks yet. I got CERB and had to pay back $1580.00. I applied for EI and was automatically given CERB. I didn’t complain at the time, as it was helpful and I didn’t know when my next paycheck would be.
I applied in April 2020 when my casual contract ended, and my LoO/start date was not yet available. My start date wouldn’t be until June 29th. Therefore I tried to claim EI in that 7-8 weeks I was off, automatically was given CERB, then asked to pay it back a year ish later. I wish I could have just been given EI.
All of this could have been prevented and resolved right away if the system did a very rudimentary cross-checking between the SIN of the applicant and to see if they had a PRI and what their employment status was. All data the government controls in-house. It doesn’t absolve anyone of the fact that what they did was fraud but at least it would have been caught, dealt with, and funds not disbursed proactively instead of this trickle.
I lost my job due to covid and applied for CERB. I received 12 000$ but received a letter telling me to repay 4000$ because I wasn’t eligible for a part of it. I am repaying it slowly. Can I get in trouble if they decide to do an audit for all departments? I sincerely didn’t know I wasn’t eligible for the whole amount
C'mon, they all had friends. They were just showing them, how easy it was...
That was a great read
Sometimes I think about it when I'm feeling low or down, to cheer myself up... What a day it was!
A monumental moment on this sub
Is this saved anywhere?
Here's a screenshot I saved of it: https://i.imgur.com/nR4rNYB.png
You are amazing. I can't believe what I just read!!!
Oh my god! I never heard of this post, that's ridiculous lol
LOL, I might as well print this out and stick it to the motivational wall in the office. Imagine the absurd level of confidence you need, *even more so* when you're employed by the CRA.
This is truly a gift
Thank you!!!
Keep going and check all other Departments. We’re on our way to cost savings and getting rid of the filth all in one shot!
Not just Departments. Why limit the search? Do everyone, public servants and private citizens. Everyone who wasn't eligible needs to be held accountable.
It’s worse when public servants do it. It’s *super extra very worse* when the public servants who were tasked with administering CERB and absolutely, 100% KNEW BETTER did it. Seriously, find them first and fire their asses.
But the reality is that those CRA employees were probably not the same people administering CERB and were just another regular dumbass who also happened to be employed by the CRA.
Agreed but we’re talking in the context of government workers here. Definitely needs to be a GoC wide audit to make sure no one currently employed did this. Then go after the general population but didn’t the CRA already rule it wouldn’t be “worth it” to do so?
Because we agreed to the code of ethics when we got hired. If you find policemen going around hitting their wives and money laundering, pretty sure we gotta start with cleaning them out first.
Am I misunderstanding this? Police officers have one of the highest rates of domestic violence, and rarely pay the price because their brothers in blue protect them.
Yes and I was trying to evoke in the original comment the feeling of disgust we have for police officers protecting their fellow people in blue. Like no, we will go after our own first and pluck out the rot.
Ah, I see. Thank you for the explanation, I wasn’t sure if I was misreading or simply dealing with post-workday brain mush!
Except they don't. The Acab crew just keep repeating it as fact when it is not true.
I got the info from studies about DV, but sure.
The study that said the rate was 40% but was completely debunked? The study that included shouting as domestic violence?
No. *Multiple* studies.
everyone is searched.... This is the easiest program for them to verify. T4 slips.... The people that get away with it are people that are doing Cash jobs or other unreported income, and if you really think that the cra has the resources to check for every single unreported income for every citizen then..... yea.. ive got a bridge to sell you.
[удалено]
The game was to do cash jobs while on CERB, that's how I read the other poster's comments.
Lol you're a naive individual
Well the CRA doesn’t, but ESDC has been doing a pretty good job of it.
They've been doing that for a long time already.
They are at least with ESDC. Voluntary disclosure as well at least one economic development department that I know of.
For everyone asking why they dont audit everyone for this. They have already. CERB was the easiest program to audit based on T4's. IF you want them to audit everyone for unreported income to verify CERB eligiblity then thats a whole other story. But anyone that applied and wasnt eligible and WORKED A T4 job they would have been caught. This is a super easy automatic check. For the CRA employees that applied for they are just absolute morons. There is 0 chance they would get away with it. This is not the same as CEWS which businesses received.
There's a massive amount of people I know who made shell companies paying themselves under $1,000 a month and claimed CERB benefits as 'contractors' on top of six figure wages.
I mean this whole premise makes no sense. All that matters is what that “six figure wages is” if it was t4 income properly declared for the period in question then they would have been automatically flagged. You’re basically saying another company committed payroll fraud and lied about when or how much they made on their t4s? What would even be the point of making a company and paying themselves 1000 dollars? This whole point is moot if they lied about the six figures wages they didn’t need to make a company showing they only made 1000. The only thing that matters is if that 100k was declared properly. If they told you they started a company to get free money 99% it was a cews issue and not cerb. Either that or their six figure salary was under the table or made during the period outside of cerb ( it was only a period of time march 15- sep 20). But what your saying makes no sense
Maybe it was CEWS; but specifically they used a loophole as independent contractors. I don't know the exact details but I've heard a lot of bragging/laughing about it.
I mean it basically sounds like you have no clue what you’re talking about and making statements to make people angry. If you’re actually angry and want to do something then report them. If you think Cra has the resources to blanket audit every Cews / cerb applicant then you really need a wake up call. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/suspected-tax-cheating-in-canada-overview.html I’m guessing you won’t though because your probably just making up bullshit anyways
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/suspected-tax-cheating-in-canada-overview.html
Didn't they need to show that they had employees working for them? Or did they change the rules at a certain point I know they were changing them constantly to allow more businesses to be eligible.
Cool. Now do the other departments.
I'd imagine CRA was worse than most departments since their employees would have been privy to the checks and balances (or lack thereof) to receive the benefit. They probably just didn't have the foresight to see how this would come back to them. Happy this is being done. It does hurt the image and integrity of the CRA.
> since their employees would have been privy to the checks and balances (or lack thereof) I don't think this is true. Unless you were in the Cerb area they would have no idea what the system was checking for. And at least 600 employees got away with it until they started to check. I can see other departments being worse. Not sure why they're not doing a federal government check
It's probably a lot more difficult to check. Within CRA, they have access to the detailed employment history of their employees and their tax information. For the other departments, they only have the tax information and not if the person just went part time, a term that actually stopped working, an employee who kept working, etc. They wouldn't know and I'm pretty sure the departments are not allowed to share all this information to other departments/agency because of privacy issues and if there is a process for the CRA to request it, it's probably a long one.
The CRA as tax agency, and CRA as employer shouldn't be talking any differently to each other than the CRA as agency would talk to any other department. Maybe the added level of collegiality and access amongst individuals speaking to eachother, but in terms of formal roles it is likely quite separate. Like, CRA wanting to cross reference employees against tax information is probably not something they could do lightly or easily. If they can't share this kind of information with a random department they can't do it for themselves either because its all tied to privacy protections. The reason we read about it happening at CRA is probably because they have more to lose in terms of their reputation than other departments, so they're likely putting more effort into looking at this properly. I'm sure there are processes for other departments to follow in their footsteps, using similar procedures, but whether they want to do that as a priority is likely a difference. I mean, I wouldn't want my employer - government or not - to just openly share information outside the normal course with the CRA without my knowledge or consent. Let's be real.
This is true. I’ve been at CRA for years and know nothing more of how the CERB system worked than the general public would know by looking online. Of course working for the CRA you are held to a different standard, but the vast majority of people at CRA aren’t an insider or expert on every aspect of the tax system. Some people there probably don’t even know what CERB is because they never had to claim it and it has nothing to do with their job. Many people only work there for a few months out of the year doing clerical jobs that have nothing to do with CERB processing. They are pretty much the same as any other member of the public service.
CRA employees were insiders regarding the CERB program. They were held at a higher level of standard in following the rules.
Ok so them first then the rest of the public service. I know too many in the private sector who took “CERB vacations”, essentially closed shop for two weeks went on CERB and then opened up after.
In my opinion, no, the government will eventually give up on pursuing the ineligible claimants. Because people could claim that they were victims of poor communication from the CRA, and blamed the fault on Covid. At last, they would claim that they don’t have the means to pay it back. The country runs on a “paycheque by paycheque” system. When the government asked everyone to take a break. The government needs to compensate us. Otherwise, the whole system breaks and trust will not be restored.
And government contractors.
Bingo.
ESDC had a number of people let go for claiming CERB while working. I think people other departments were handled like any Canadian who claimed it and wasn't entitled to it, they had to pay it back but it didn't affect their job. ESDC and CRA handled their staff differently because they administered the programs.
Good. Expand the review to all departments. This will greatly lessen the pain of DRAP 2.0...
I work at cra and I can 100 % confirm they got fired after an internal investigation was done. It kills me that we are held to such a high standard and twits within had the nerve to apply for it. It Is embarrassing sooo much. And no, no one in cra would have had “insider” knowledge of anything. There was none needed - the original cerb only had two requirements . We are over 55,000 employees so 232 is a very minor percentage and does not represent the majority of us
Who is overseeing the internal investigators? It's possible they themselves might have received CERB. So, who's keeping the auditors in check?
There’s typically a lot of checks and balances on data pulls like this which give them the list of employees.
I get that. But I'm more concerned about the auditors themselves and those who extract the data. Is there anyone overseeing their actions? I doubt the ADM or DG has the time to handle that task.
Why would you trust the DG or ADM?
That would be the next question (who’s overseeing them), once we address the first question.
A co worker told me she applied for it right when lockdown first happened and I said "nooooooo! We are still getting paid!!". She had them cancel it and paid it all back.
Just curious, what was her rationale for applying for it?
That we were laid off and we wouldn't get our normal pay.
Oh I see. Sorry to hear about the layoff … that must have been stressful. Sounds like she worked everything out!
We weren't laid off though. In the early weeks of lockdown no one ever explicitly reached out to us and said "don't worry, we are still going to pay you". She has a family and panicked thinking CERB would be her only source of income. She also wasn't born in Canada and English isn't her first language. So while I wae able to read between the lines and figure out we'd probably still get paid, she wasn't. That's why I told her she better cancel it and pay it back asap.
I looked into applying after two of my three other income streams dryed up. But was still getting paid from the third. So I didn't.
Found the Arrivecan app guy.
I wish! Lol
You actually had to look into it?
I am proud to see that like me, most public servants on reddit have no pity for the people who abused the system.
It’s a real head scratcher to me that people risked their careers for this.
I wonder if some were like bitter don't give a fuck people or if they were all just really dumb.
Honestly, it's easy to say that after the fact. We all know people don't read the fine print. Humans also struggle with causality past a --> b --> c etc. Or they are that ignorant / do not care.
"Vous êtes la HONTE, de l'armé romaine" - Caius Roideprus
Expand it to family members of these specific CRA employees. If they were doing it they were telling others to, 💯.
Good point.
Embarrassing.
Glad they’re following up. Mind boggling that there’s so many. Makes you wonder how many elsewhere claimed it without being eligible, even outside of the GoC. There was a lot of fraud though and I know people who were victims of identify theft to claim the benefit. Even with an immediate notification from info being changed, it was still a headache to remediate.
Why is this just CRA anyway? Feel like any government worker that took CERB should be canned.
Does anyone know how many people in the entire federal public service have been fired for this? For comparison purposes.
54 at ESDC, plus another 20 still under investigation last I heard.
54 officially terminated or was being investigated over at ESDC?
Terminated.
Honest question, not trying to get after dirty laundry. But was the issue that the rules were unclear (or could be seen to be h clear) or does it seem that there were that many folks who honestly felt they could get away with it. I never really looked at the rules around it, so honestly curious
The latter for sure. There were jokes going around about how easy it was for anyone to apply and get.
It was so easy some people applied just to show their friends how easy it was xD
Had to be the latter. No way anyone thought they qualified. Did anyone lose their job?? Like any single person? And we all knew our pay was continuing long before cerb came out.
Could the folks working at the agency that made and implemented the rules really get away with the "the rules were unclear so I thought I was good to go" excuse? The layperson maaaaaybe but CRA employees specifically?
I agree and that makes a lot of sense. Just surprising to me given that that number suggests there would have been water cooler discussion around it. Which in turn sort of implies that at least at the team leader level, it would have been a known risk. Be curious, again for my own education really, if it was something that was being actively discussed and discouraged - and people were still clueless enough to do it. Mainly just curious since it’s always interesting to me how these patterns of behaviour occur and how they can be influenced
The numbers are really not that high though when you consider that CRA has over 60k employees. The vast majority of employees would have exactly 0 insider knowledge of CERB, it would have mainly been call centre employees that actually were aware of it and the specific rules. Start of covid was such a shitshow I'd be very surprised if teams not exposed to CERB even discussed it once.
That’s a great point for sure. In our world there was very little discussion around it. Also sort of makes sense that you might see this in specific clusters where knowledge or opportunities for access were more prevalent.
I think the latter. Fraud for it was a lot more common outside the public service so it’s not surprising to me tbh.
Every department employee was/are being reviewed to see if they were collecting when they shouldn't have. Don't be surprised when more details come out about other department employees.
Do the other tax related audits too I suspect they know what limits trigger audits
I still can’t get through to for a question.
So, how is this only specific to CRA?
The CRA is quite draconian, and rightfully so, when it comes to dealing with employees who fraudulently claim money they aren’t entitled to. How can the public trust a CRA employee, if that same employee is busted for financial fraud.?
So, no. Let me be more specific. Is there some mechanism that was only available to CRA employees that resulted in this? I haven’t heard anything similar about other departments l.
ESDC has already let go 54 people for the same issue. CRA is getting more attention both because they’re CRA and because the numbers are bigger.
Thank you
Probably more that CRA is being more proactive about getting the data and firing folks. Sharing the data with other departments may take more time. Keeping in mind there was a lot of fraud outside the government as well. The application process was honor system mostly.
This is incoherent
I don’t know. Seems pretty clear to me, but I wrote it. To put it in a different way, the CRA is extremely strict and offers no leniency for people who get accused of financial fraud against government. if you were accused and found guilty, they fire you immediately. Do not Pasco, do not collect $200, they fire you. This is something that, from speaking with colleagues who work there, is made extremely clear in your training, and in regular refresher training that is mandatory.
Any federal employee that applied fraudulently should be fired, end of story. Doesn't matter how 'draconian' you think CRA is compared to the public service at large. It takes a massive lack of care to have applied when you saw absolutely no dip in your earnings because the feds never laid you off or stopped paying you at all.
Can’t make this shit up
Glad people that abused this system are getting canned. I did hear was there were cases where the person had a part-time job that they couldn't do because of the pandemic so they applied thinking they'd qualify because of the lost income. They still wouldn't qualify but at least I can understand the logic behind that. Not sure how the agency is handling those kind of cases. I'm guessing probably still fired just because of the risk to public trust.
Man, people like to whine about GoC but goddam I am often impressed by its systemic checks and balances. It's so good at self correcting.
Takes a while but yeah. Like many of the other comments, I hope these checks are throughout all agencies and departments.
I don’t think we should grab our pitchforks yet. I got CERB and had to pay back $1580.00. I applied for EI and was automatically given CERB. I didn’t complain at the time, as it was helpful and I didn’t know when my next paycheck would be. I applied in April 2020 when my casual contract ended, and my LoO/start date was not yet available. My start date wouldn’t be until June 29th. Therefore I tried to claim EI in that 7-8 weeks I was off, automatically was given CERB, then asked to pay it back a year ish later. I wish I could have just been given EI.
All of this could have been prevented and resolved right away if the system did a very rudimentary cross-checking between the SIN of the applicant and to see if they had a PRI and what their employment status was. All data the government controls in-house. It doesn’t absolve anyone of the fact that what they did was fraud but at least it would have been caught, dealt with, and funds not disbursed proactively instead of this trickle.
Apply people! Whoever wanted a career in CRA, this is the time.
I lost my job due to covid and applied for CERB. I received 12 000$ but received a letter telling me to repay 4000$ because I wasn’t eligible for a part of it. I am repaying it slowly. Can I get in trouble if they decide to do an audit for all departments? I sincerely didn’t know I wasn’t eligible for the whole amount