Adrian Wyld La Presse canadienne « À ce jour, 185 employés de l’Agence ayant touché la PCU de manière inappropriée ne sont plus à son emploi », a déclaré mercredi une porte-parole de l’ARC.
This fall, the federal government identified several dozen other officials from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) who received amounts from the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) in defiance of the rules they themselves administered .
“To date, 185 Agency employees who inappropriately received the CERB are no longer employed,” said CRA spokesperson Nina Ioussoupova in an update. update of the internal investigation launched this year.
The CERB was a federal program established during the COVID-19 pandemic to compensate workers forced to stay home by lockdowns up to $500 per week. Given the salaries and working conditions enjoyed by federal civil servants, most of them were ineligible for emergency aid.
The program was administered by the Canadian Revenue Agency. It ended more than three years ago, being replaced by another pandemic program in October 2020.
This is almost a third of the approximately 600 ARC employees examined by the internal investigation who had something to reproach themselves for. The government agency indicates that 116 targeted employees were in fact eligible for the CERB, such as those on temporary contracts or students hired before being laid off because of the virus.
The internal investigation is continuing for the rest of the federal aid recipients who were also on the regular payroll of the organization that distributed these checks. The Agency had already announced that it had fired 120 of these offending employees in September, while demanding reimbursements.
“The actions of some must in no way call into question the integrity and honesty of the thousands of employees who work in an exemplary manner within the Agency in the service of their fellow citizens,” specified the ARC this summer.
Last year, the Auditor General of Canada concluded that $4.6 billion had been overpaid during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the form of the CERB or Canada Recovery Benefit economic (PCRE). She strongly advised the government to take a closer look at 27.4 billion in miscellaneous benefits to detect other anomalies.