CRA head says it 'wouldn't be worth the effort' to review all ineligible pandemic payments

The head of the Canada Revenue Agency says it 'wouldn't be worth the effort' to fully review $15.5 billion in potentially ineligible pandemic wage benefit payments flagged by Canada's Auditor General.

The head of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) says it "wouldn't be worth the effort" to fully review $15.5 billion in potentially ineligible pandemic wage benefit payments flagged by Canada's Auditor General.

"We take generally almost exclusively an approach within the agency to focus on a risk-based assessment," CRA Commissioner Bob Hamilton told members of Parliament Thursday afternoon. "So, take a look at the information that we have at our disposal, try to identify where the highest risks are, and go after those and the highest risk and the potential for recovery, and not cover 100 per cent of people."

Hamilton appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Thursday alongside auditor general Karen Hogan.

"We don't take issue with the risk-based approach the [CRA]'s made," Hogan said during the two-hour meeting. "It's really the amount of work, the extent of work, that we don't believe is sufficient in order to meet sort of that fairness threshold of treating every taxpayer—whether they be an individual or business—fairly."

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.

"The first step is to identify payments to ineligible recipients, then the decision can be made to go after collection or not collection," Hogan told lawmakers. "I just encourage the government to be a lot more transparent with what they're doing, and I think they need to do more work."

For his part, Hamilton took issue with calculations in the audit, saying that the true amount of ineligible payments is expected to be "significantly lower" than the Auditor General's "overestimate," which was based on sales tax data.