Come One, Come All : Open Season on Benefits

"I highly doubt any money will be recovered from those files since there is no misrepresentation from the claimants."
"We have the information and it is our decision to pay, so I don't see on what basis we could ask these people to pay back."
Employment and Social Development Canada employee source 

"[The Canada Emergency Response Benefit -- CERB pays $500 a week during an initial four-month stretch for people] who have stopped working because of reasons related to COVID-19, [those eligible for employment insurance [EI] or whose EI benefits were were to run out between December 29 and this October 3]."
"When the agent determines the client qualifies for an EI Emergency Response Benefit claim, adjudication is deferred on all contentious issues."
"No fact-finding is required [as opposed to normal vetting of EI claims; i.e., interviews with workers or employers; fact finding]." 
"When the agent determines the client qualifies for an EI Emergency Response Benefit claim, adjudication is deferred on all contentious issues."
"Should a disentitlement be imposed for out-of-Canada on EI Emergency Response claims? No. ... The information must be recorded on file but no disentitlements should be imposed."
COVID-19 and deferral of adjudication on an EI Emergency Response Benefit claim memo

The employment insurance section of the Government of Canada website is shown on April 4, 2020. Jesse Johnston/The Canadian Press

To receive a $2,000 monthly emergency payment from Canada's government, claimants must have been placed out of work by the effect of the pandemic. Applicants can be qualified if they are eligible for regular employment insurance or if they have exhausted earlier EI benefits. Now, another memorandum has been issued to Employment and Social Development Canada staff busy processing applications, which informs that they are expected to approve claims whether or not the claimant might have quit their workplace voluntarily, or even if they had been fired for misconduct.

Instructions are to defer 'until later', adjudication of 'contentious issues'. Canadians who left work or who took a leave of absence to travel abroad in advance of the pandemic are eligible for the same casual approach to qualifying for the benefit. The federal government appears prepared to set aside the usual checks and balances for such relief programs, intent on disbursing billions to unemployed Canadians widely and swiftly, if not wisely and carefully.

Where evidence of possible abuse exists, as mentioned in an earlier memo to staff, employees should be prepared to issue payments and make no referral cases for investigation. Unwarranted or fraudulent payments will, assures government, be pursued at a later date, a statement viewed with skepticism by people who are knowledgeable about how the system works.

The result is that Employment and Social Development Canada employees looking askance at these new directives in ordering them to deviate from the usual cautionary schedule in administering unemployment assists are undergoing a period of eroded morale. Employees trained and skilled in detecting ineligibility or fraud, are witnessing their professionalism on the job being deliberately perverted by their employer.

In an effort to defend the new guidelines an official with the department pointed out that in the initial step of CERB applications, applicants must pledge that they are eligible for the payments. Someone fired for cause, while not normally qualified for benefits, now may qualify, since records of employment setting out such information are not requested as proof to qualify and receive CERB. The sheer vast numbers involved in the application process account for the lack of scrutiny.

To the present, government data indicate that almost 8 million Canadians have seen their applications processed, and $30 billion has been paid out to those whose applications have passed scrutiny where under the new system there is no scrutiny and everyone who applies qualifies. Should the client's record show they left their workplace voluntarily, the agent is cautioned to select the phrase "voluntary leaving-- just cause shown" on the decision record.

Should the applicant have been dismissed, the departmental staff person must indicate that the client is eligible for benefits and "misconduct not proven", according to instructions contained in the second memorandum to departmental employees. The qualification process is nonsense, according to the reckoning of a source familiar with the process, since one of the requirements of the program is that the applicant be unemployed as a result of the pandemic.

P. M. Justin Trudeau May 14, 2020.Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press

"Getting that help to the 99 per cent of Canadians who needed it quickly and rapidly — even if it meant accepting that one or two per cent might make fraudulent claims — was the choice that we gladly made."
"We should not slow down or paralyze the system, and prevent millions of Canadians from getting the help they really need because of the one per cent of fraudulent applicants."
"We have put in strong measures to ensure that anyone who is trying to defraud the system will get caught and there will be consequences."
"But that was not our priority. Our priority was helping people immediately and the fraud measures will kick in in the coming months."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 

"The law is the law. Did the government tell public servants to ignore the CERB Act that was passed by parliament?"
"We are asking for some basic answers and accountability from this prime minister and government and they have failed to address substantively any of these questions."
Conservative MP Dan Albas

"[No one is questioning the value of the program or the need to hand out cheques expeditiously. Nor was it necessary to investigate every claim as it came in.]"
"[But] we know from civil servants themselves there are files being flagged … [200,000 files in total] so why is the government not doing anything about it?"
"If there’s reason to suspect abuse, they should be following up on it … Essentially there’s an open invitation now to anyone who wants to defraud the program."
Aaron Wudrick, national director, Taxpayers Federation of Canada