CERB VOW FROM FEDS

Shift to EI to be seamless

OTTAWA • Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough made assurances on Wednesday that the federal government would smoothly funnel millions of Canadians from its key COVID-19 financial aid program into employment insurance, as a major end-of-month deadline looms.

Qualtrough said people currently tapping into the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) would be transitioned into EI “seamlessly and without benefit disruption.” She reiterated claims that the EI program is prepared to handle an influx in recipients, who will need to be transitioned from CERB at the end of August.

“It’s robust, it’s ready to ingest the millions of Canadians it needs to,” she said during Question Period on Wednesday.

The federal government has said that it will terminate the CERB, expected to cost taxpayers $82 billion, by end of month, as it seeks to grapple with a population that is slowly returning back to work. Qualtrough said the government was “weeks away from making that transition” in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Winding down the program underscores the difficult balancing act facing the government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as it seeks to wean Canadians off of COVID-19 supports, while also ensuring that unemployed or partially employed workers continue to receive adequate coverage.

The CERB program has been criticized for being overly generous at $2,000 per month, creating a disincentive for some recipients to return to work.

A survey last month by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which represents 110,000 small and medium-sized businesses, found that 27 per cent of business owners had encountered workers who “refused to return to work when recalled.”

Of those who refused to return, 62 per cent cited a preference to stay on the CERB program, according to the July 16 survey.

A total of 8.5 million Canadians have been approved for the CERB benefit as of August 2, for a total cost of $64 billion, according to government data.

Qualtrough also spoke to the House of Commons finance committee on Wednesday about the WE Charity controversy, in which she distanced herself from the initial decision to seek out a third party to administer a student support program.

The minister said she did not know why a scheduled discussion about the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) program was pulled from the agenda ahead of a May 5 cabinet meeting, which has since become a central focus in the controversy.

“I was not involved in any discussions about why this was pulled from the agenda, the prime minister’s request for due diligence, as this wasn’t my file,” she said.

She said she was aware that the prime minister and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, had taken on speaking engagements with the WE organization, but had no further knowledge about any connections between the Liberal members and the charity.

Qualtrough also repeated her defence as to why the Liberal government used a third party to administer the $900-million CSSG program, saying the public service at the time was too preoccupied with major COVID-19 programs like CERB.

“There was massive public service bandwidth issues, we were asking them to do so very much at that time,” she said.