Under Trudeau CERB stands for Canada’s Easy Ripoff Bank.
Ill-conceived plan could long haunt us
the prime minister and his government had only two tasks during the COVID crisis and have failed at both: Vaccine procurement and financial relief for Canadians during the lockdown.
Canada is now 38th in vaccinations, the cupboard is bare, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week ducked a question as to whether or not he’s begging for vaccines from India. The actual answer? he is.
I’ve written extensively about the life-threatening bungling by the Liberals in terms of procurement, and will do so in more detail. but the financial botch-up constitutes another type of malpractice. Trudeau handed out funds in a hurry using a firehose instead of targeting money to those in need. billions are involved.
More than $636 million in or Cerb payments — that stands for Canada emergency response benefit — was doled out to 300,000 teenagers between 15 and 17. Most were in high school and, presumably, living with parents or guardians. They certainly were not homeless.
This boondoggle was predicted in a Fraser Institute report this summer based on demographics and the stupid open-ended criteria used to give away our money. Now documents quantify the imprudence.
The National Post reported on Jan. 27 that “40,630 15-year-olds were approved for the benefit. The government paid out $81.2 million for that group. Among 16-yearolds approved, there were 92,784 receiving nearly $186 million, and 184,576 17-year-olds received $369 million.”
The giveaway began at the end of March and was $500 per week for 26 weeks. That’s $13,000 that was supposed to go those who had earned $5,000 the year before. I don’t know many kids that age who make that kind of money but they applied in droves anyway, or someone did on their behalf. Proof wasn’t required apparently.
Last year, former finance minister bill Morneau, who flamed out for handing out lots of money to youngsters at Wecharity, explained the program: “The Cerb benefit … was recognizing how many people were going to be off work without enough money to pay for groceries or rent, and we needed to get support to them rapidly.”
dependents don’t pay for groceries or rent, bill, but I digress.
The government stated that the payments would be taxable and began sending letters to 500,000 Cerb recipients (adults and kids) seeking more information about their eligibility and notifying them that if they didn’t qualify they would have to repay benefits.
So why had they been given money in the first place? In essence, this was a program that gave away hundreds of millions of dollars and was recklessly scattergun. Naturally, lawsuits followed because, allegedly, the application form was “confusing.” The Liberals caved — eyeing an election campaign sometime this year — and completely reversed course and announced that self-employed recipients who didn’t meet the criteria wouldn’t have to repay after all.
The Canada revenue Agency was thrown under the bus for putting “unclear” eligibility information on the application forms — something that someone with a cortex in the cabinet should have spotted. The explanation was that there was confusion over whether the criteria was based on gross income, or net income. Of course, that’s a level of financial sophistication that no Liberal cabinet can be accused of.
This and other ill-conceived programs have now forked out the equivalent of 16.4 per cent of our GDP in COVID relief payments to mostly middle or upper income people, kids, and anyone who filled out a bloody form. That’s the world’s second highest level. To boot, most recipients didn’t need a dime from the rest of us either.
In Trudeauland, Cerb stands for Canada’s easy ripoff bank.