Pierre Poilievre rails about the money the Trudeau government spent during the pandemic. And there were problems. Max Fawcett writes that the auditor general has pinpointed:
$4.6 billion in payments to people who weren’t eligible for the programs they tapped, along with a further $27.4 billion that went to businesses or individuals that auditor general Karen Hogan says deserve further scrutiny. “I am concerned about the lack of rigour on post-payment verifications and collection activities,” she said in a news release.
But, overall, Hogan's report:
also speaks to how successful the federal government’s COVID-19 support programs were, given the speed at which they were deployed and the uncertain environment in which they were created and refined. As it notes: “Within weeks, many programs were up and running. Historically, programs of this size would have taken months, if not years, to roll out.”
That speed necessarily raised the risk of giving money to people or businesses that didn’t need it, and the $32 billion the report identifies as potential overpayments to individuals and businesses are obviously a problem. But they pale in comparison to the rampant fraud that took place in the United States, where an estimated 10 per cent of the $800-billion Paycheck Protection Program was literally stolen — along with as much as $400 billion from the $900 billion COVID unemployment relief program and another $78 billion in so-called “Economic Injury Disaster Loans.”
As Carleton University professor Jennifer Robson pointed out, the $4.6 billion in overpayments to individuals amounts to a four per cent overall rate — not great, but not that much different from the one per cent overpayment rate the Employment Insurance program reported in 2019. “I’m having a hard time seeing this as scandalous when the rules to get CERB/recovery benefits were so pared down, by necessity for speed/ease (which the AG acknowledges), and with consent of Parliament,” Robson tweeted.
She wasn’t the only one refusing to clutch her pearls on the subject. As Laval economist Stephen Gordon said in his own tweet, “If someone from the future had visited me in April 2020 and told me that two years later, the most pressing economic concern in Canada would be an overheating economy and inflation, I would have been ecstatic. That was the *good news* scenario in April 2020.”
Something to keep in mind when you hear Poilievre's complaints.
Image: The Tyee
8 comments:
"Something to keep in mind when you hear Poilievre's complaints."
Well, tbh, I am not listening much to Lil'PP. Perhaps you are (thanks ;-) ) but neither of us need the reminder.
Alas, the people who do need this reminder will not get it.
Aye, there's the rub!
They'll be driven by anger, PoV, not logic.
Skippy must be counting his blessings that the pandemic didn't happen on his watch. Talk about "horseshoes"
Skippy knows how to complain, zoombats. I'm not sure he knows much else.
I was kick off CBC for comments for an article about a retired Toronto couple with a handicapped older child not getting full assistance for a two month old garage business.
My comment was 2 minimum Canadian pensions were over 3000 plus disability for adult child would be over 1500, that's 4500 a month clear to scrape by on, at home, in a pandemic.
Their voting tendency was not recorded but I venture most of the abuse of those programs was by the "F*** Trudeau" flag wavers.
Cons will be cons and criminals will be criminals an sometimes the bleating of either is just projection.*segue to a 'lil pp shower talk*
That's been my experience, lungta. Conservative criticism is mostly projection.
all P.P. knows how to do is complain. Lets not forget he was part of Harper's "team". They didn't have any good ideas, just repressive Leg. which violated the Constition.
If the Conservatives were in office when covid hit, they'd have offered tax breaks to the corporations and nothing to the general public. Trudeau and the Liberals did a good job of getting money out to people. The cheques were sent out on a 49 year old computer. it was funny because that computer was capable of doing something the old federal computers could do.
When I look back on when covid started and most people were at home and not working or drawing a pay cheque, not much changed where I lived. People had an income. No one lost their home, no one had to go to food banks, no one lost their vehicles, etc. The small business loans helped a friend restart her business. Had Trudeau not sent out those cheques the food banks and welfare offices would have been over run by new clients and children would have suffered.
History will applaud Trudeau's COVID response, e.a.f.
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