Government chasing 102-year-old pensioner for $110 overpayment
Documents show paltry success collecting money paid in error
The government has managed to recover just two per cent of the money overpaid to pensioners, and Liberal finance critic Cathy Bennett is pointing out that the situation is starting to get absurd.
The Liberals recently filed an access to information request for details about the pension overpayments, and discovered the government is going after a 102year-old for receiving $110 more than the pensioner should have been paid.
“(The overpayment) is going to be collected in a negotiated payment plan over the next number of years,” Bennett said. “I mean, if I tried to do that with my mother, somebody would say that’s elder abuse.”
In April, Finance Minister Ross Wiseman said errors had been discovered in the pension administration system which led to overpayments to public-sector retirees.
The government has since been trying to recover the $934,979 from 427 people — mostly relatively small sums, but 39 people owe more than $5,000.
Right from the start, Wiseman said the government would aim to be reasonable about the collection process, and wouldn’t force any undue hardship on retirees by making them repay more than they could afford. Wiseman also acknowledged the error was entirely the government’s fault, and the pensioners bear no responsibility.
Wiseman was not available for an interview for this story.
What the Liberal access to information shows is that the government has already written off more than 30 per cent of the money owing.
Over the spring and summer, the government hired a consultant to meet with pensioners, assess their financial state and make recommendations to the government about how much of the money could reasonably be paid back.
NDP MHA Lorraine Michael said the government may be right to seek repayment from pensioners, because that’s standard policy.
Michael pointed out the government tries to recover money from people who are overpaid in error on income support. The difference, she said, is that in most repayment situations the government doesn’t make a big deal out of it.
Bennett said the government should just write off all the money owing, and repay the pension plans out of general revenue.
“Government didn’t have a moral licence to collect this money, and I didn’t believe they had a fiscal reason to collect this money, given the amount of time and effort that was going to be put into collecting it,” she said. “There’s no way the taxpayers of this province are going to see a benefit for this work. I mean, it’s going to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to collect it.”