AID PACKAGE BEEFED UP

$52B in direct support

The federal government is hiking its direct aid to Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic to $52 billion, mostly by sending $2,000 every month to those affected by the novel coronavirus. But some worry the system won’t be able to keep up with demand.

On Wednesday, Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced that he was repackaging two aid measures announced last week — the Emergency Care Benefit and the Emergency Support Benefit — into one simpler program: the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

Administered by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the new measure will send $2,000 monthly for up to four months straight into the bank accounts of Canadians affected by COVID-19.

“The CERB would cover Canadians who have lost their job, are sick, quarantined, or taking care of someone who is sick with COVID-19, as well as working parents who must stay home without pay to care for children who are sick or at home because of school and daycare closures,” the Department of Finance said in an email.

With this new benefit, the cost of direct COVID-19 aid has nearly doubled, going from an estimated $27 billion last week to $52 billion now. The measure was approved by Parliament on Wednesday as part of a larger emergency aid package.

To access the CERB, an application website will be launched at the beginning of April. The government then estimates it will take 10 days for approved applicants to start receiving their money. That means the first cheques most likely won’t be sent out until late into the second week of April.

Of the government’s own admission, this new CERB was designed to alleviate the strain on the Employment Insurance (EI) system. In just over a week, roughly one million Canadians have applied for EI because of COVID-19-related closures and layoffs.

The normal weekly average is 45,000 applications.

“The EI system was not designed to process the unprecedented high volume of applications received in the past week,” Finance Canada admitted in a statement.

“We know neither the depth nor the duration of this challenge,” Morneau added during a news conference Wednesday. “The situation is urgent. That’s why we found a simple and efficient way to administer the aid. Clearly, our current systems did not have the capacity to rise to the challenge, and that’s why we’re finding a new way to deal with this.”

But considering the fact that millions of Canadians are expected to need access to the new benefit during a time when the federal bureaucracy is also deeply affected by COVID-19, some are concerned that even this new benefit won’t stop the government’s aid system from being overwhelmed.

“We know that with this amount of EI claims coming in at once, we will definitely need more help in processing all those files,” Eddy Bourque, president of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, told the National Post.

To increase the processing speed of new EI claims, he says Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) has even been asking former EI claims specialists to come back to work for the department for the next few months.

ESDC has also been rushing to equip bureaucrats now working from home with secure phone lines and laptops to allow them to continue processing EI claims remotely, Bourque says.

WE WILL DEFINITELY NEED MORE

HELP IN PROCESSING ALL THOSE

FILES.

“The system just isn’t ready today for the wave of requests coming in. One way or another, they are going to have to streamline the process to make it faster so that Canadians can get money in their pockets sooner,” Bourque said.

And will the Canada Revenue Agency be ready to process all the new CERB requests it will be receiving when applications open as early as next week?

Just this week, the agency’s call centre was operating at limited capacity because of recent strains on Canada’s “telephony infrastructure as a whole,” a spokesperson confirmed. Thus, CRA is asking people to limit their calls to the agency.

Despite that, we’ll be ready, said the director of communications for the Minister of National Revenue. The only (temporary) issue the agency foresees is if millions of people try to file a claim on the first day, which may cause the IT system “to struggle,” she added.

“The volume for CRA isn’t exceptional. Let’s say four million people apply for the new benefit, that’s not a lot for the department considering they deal with every single Canadian taxpayer and business every year,” said Janick Cormier.

“I know that it sounds like a huge endeavour to some, but for CRA, it’s not a huge concern.”.