Taxpayers are on the hook for nearly $34 million in unrecoverable payments from the federal government’s pandemic relief program, new figures reveal.Blacklock's Reporter says the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), passed by Parliament in March 2020, handed out $2,000 monthly cheques to Canadians who claimed to be out of work. Nearly half of the national workforce — more than 9 million people — applied for the benefit. In total, $74.7 billion was spent.According to Access to Information records, $5.4 billion has since been clawed back from ineligible claimants, while $33,592,561 has been written off entirely. .A departmental report said write-offs occurred when recipients could not be reached, had died without an estate, or faced such financial hardship that repayment was impossible.Auditor General Karen Hogan previously warned that fraud was obvious from the outset, noting officials knowingly approved payments without verifying eligibility. Employment managers later admitted to MPs that the program was designed to send money quickly, even if it meant billions would go out the door improperly.Suspicious claims surfaced across the country. In Old Crow, Yukon — where the jobless rate was 12% — more than half the community received CERB. In Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, 40% of residents collected payments. In Iqaluit, 28% of the working-age population received cheques..The program also cut cheques to nearly 318,000 high school students, including tens of thousands of Grade 9 applicants.Originally budgeted at $24 billion, CERB spending ballooned to more than triple that amount.
