Nearly $10 Billion in COVID Relief Benefits Paid to Ineligible Applicants: CRA

Nearly $10 billion worth of COVID pandemic relief payments were sent to ineligible applicants, and to date, less than 20 percent of the amount has been recovered, a report by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) recently confirmed. In a brief submitted to the Senate national finance committee on May 14, the CRA broke down that total amount into two categories, indicating that it was based on 544,000 cases the agency had audited up the 2023 year-end of people who received federal COVID-related benefits. “As it relates to individual programs, the CRA had completed reviews and thus far had found that $7.96B in payments had been ineligible (all amounts as of December 31, 2023),” the agency told Sen. Pierre Dalphond in the brief in a response to the senator’s questions on the matter, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter....