COVID-19 benefit repayment is hurting low-income Canadians, report says | CBC News

Think-tank says collecting debts from ineligible recipients is costly, ineffective

Over six years after the COVID-19 pandemic started, the federal government is still trying to track down billions of dollars sent to Canadians who were later found to be ineligible for benefits.

According to a report from Maytree, a think-tank and advocacy group that studies poverty, those recollection efforts disproportionately affect low-income Canadians who can't pay, and ultimately cost more than they recover.

It calls for an end to the government's efforts to recover pandemic benefits.

In total, Ottawa distributed about $14 billion in COVID-related benefits to individuals who didn't meet the Canada Revenue Agency's income requirements. Most of that sum was provided under the Canada emergency response benefit (CERB) and later the Canada recovery benefit (CRB).

By the end of last November, the CRA reported that $10 billion was outstanding, over $8 billion of which was owed on CERB and CRB payouts. CBC News reached out to the CRA for updated figures, but the agency was unable to provide them after more than two weeks of requests.

CRA says it's owed $10 billion in COVID-related benefits sent to ineligible recipients

"This is not a story about fraud," the report says. "It is a story about what happens when a government moves fast, makes mistakes and then hands the bill to the people least able to pay it."

John Stapleton, co-author of the Maytree report and a social policy expert, says his group acknowledges some people knowingly applied for benefits they shouldn't have received.

"We're not asking them to absolve those people," he said. "[But] there's some people out there that got caught in this net who are really suffering as a result."

In Budget 2025, Ottawa provided $123 million to support the government's collection of its pandemic response benefits over two years, starting in 2026-27.

According to Stapleton and Tyler Meredith, a senior fellow at the Munk School of Public Policy and a fellow at Maytree, many Canadians who still owe a debt on pandemic benefits are low-income.