Commentary
“I feel like a fool for not trying to cheat the system.” That’s the response one social media account gave to a news article explaining how the federal government performed a $4.5 billion write-off for wrongly received COVID-19 benefits.
It’s maybe not the most decent response and was hopefully made in jest, but it’s surely one that crosses some peoples’ minds—and it shows what happens when people start to lose trust in their institutions.
The $4.5 billion figure comes courtesy of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, which released its annual commentary on the federal budget the day after the finance minister tabled it in the House of Commons last week.
When the country was plunged into pandemic lockdowns in 2020, the government quickly doled out untold billions of dollar to individuals and businesses to keep people afloat who were otherwise barred from going to work or operating their business.
If someone worked in a store that was ordered closed by the government, they were unable to make money through no fault of their own and so the purpose of CERB was to make sure they could still pay their rent and purchase groceries. Likewise for the CEBA programs which ensured that businesses forced to close didn’t fail because of government edict.
The vast majority were worthy applicants. But, as the feds soon disclosed, many took the money who weren’t eligible or received overpayments. This applied to over 1.5 million Canadians.
As early as spring 2022, the government began to communicate to people that they needed to pay the money back. Many of them did repay, having made an honest mistake in accepting the funds initially. During the early days of collection, the government focused on voluntary repayments and tax refund offsets.
Efforts ramped up later, as the feds went so far as garnishing wages and freezing bank accounts. You can’t say that they didn’t try, at least in some cases.
They managed to get back around $3.7 billion in overpayments. But now they are resigned to giving up pursuit of $4.5 billion in outstanding payments. It’s quite a write-off, given that last year they only wrote off $26 million.
The details on what these accounts look like and why they were abandoned haven’t been disclosed.
Did these people use fake identities? Are they no longer in Canada? Are they bankrupt? We don’t know, so it’s hard to fault the feds without understanding what was behind the decision.
What we do know though is that some people wrongly took billions of dollars from the government and they’re now off the hook.
What’s the lesson there? Hopefully, the main lesson is to have stronger verification protocols in place when doling out so much cash so quickly. For the unethical among us, however, the lesson might be that there’s money for the taking, as that social media user remarked.
When that type of thinking starts doing the rounds it creates what we call a low-trust society—where people stop following the rules, become cynical, and look for opportunities to exploit the system. There’s a lot of chatter these days about Canada slipping from a very high-trust society to a low one. It’s sad to think that this may be true, but there have been other recent examples.
A video surfaced on social media the other day showing thieves taking expensive bottles of liquor from an LCBO outlet in the West End of Toronto. The masked criminals weren’t too bothered when confronted by customers and staff. Instead of dropping the stolen goods, they sped up to complete the job—all caught on camera.
It’s far from the first video of such an encounter. There have been LCBO theft videos going viral for the past couple of years.
Honest people see the videos and get frustrated, knowing the thieves will face no consequences, which will only lead to increased products costs for them. Dishonest thieves see a successful crime and want to join in.
Then there are the concerns around means-tested usage of food banks. Canadians are now regularly alerted to increased demand and need at food banks across the country. It makes sense, because everyone sees the cost of groceries rising and knows many people are hurting economically.
But there has also been anger and backlash in recent months in response to people sharing videos that recommend food banks as a “grocery hack” to just get free food and save on your budgeting, as opposed to something people do in times of genuine need.
If people feel like programs are increasingly being abused and that more people are breaking the rules, it leads to an erosion of trust. People who always follow the law and pay their taxes become resentful. In the case of the $4.5 billion COVID write-offs, that’s money stolen from taxpayers.
It’s not good to live in a society where these phenomena are increasing. We should strive to tackle them and restore trust in the system.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
