No money back
Auditor general Jane MacAdam tells MLAs some social assistance clients were underpaid and not reimbursed
“It’s not documented in policy, but we were advised that that’s their practice.”
Auditor general Jane MacAdam
Some social assistance clients who didn’t get the money they were entitled to weren’t paid retroactively if they left the program, says P.E.I.’s auditor general.
Speaking to the province’s public accounts Wednesday, auditor general Jane MacAdam said her office’s review of social assistance payments found they weren’t always calculated properly.
MacAdam said in some cases the amounts were corrected when the files were reviewed, but for other people they weren’t paid what was owed if the clients left the program.
“It was about half and half,” she said.
MacAdam appeared before the public accounts committee as part of its review of her annual report that included an audit of the social assistance program.
During her appearance at the committee meeting, MacAdam said 13 per cent of recipients in the sample for the audit were underpaid based on their circumstances.
The impact ranged from $9 to $154 per month, she said.
MacAdam told the MLAs that during the period of her office’s review, the social assistance program’s audit services section started a process to randomly review files to ensure payments were correct.
“It was a key control to monitor that payments are the correct amount,” she said.
The social assistance program didn’t have a documented policy to keep payment errors from being corrected retroactively for clients who left the program, MacAdam said.
“It’s not documented in policy, but we were advised that that’s their practice.”