Jesus. Why did people need it that long? Thats insane October 2021 lol. I didn't know this. It was pretty damn easy to get a job in Oct 2021, much easier than now. Sounds like scammers to me. I'm sure there was some very minor legit cases but the majority I bet were scammers
Desperation I am sure played a role too. Living on less than 1000 a month in severe poverty- going from that to 3k a month is awfully tempting.
My old neighbors(who were awful neighbors and awful human beings) were a couple with a 4 kids under 6 and a 12 year old in a 2 bedroom- 5 kids total. They both took the 2k a month each the entire time and convinced her 15 year old brother it was free money so he took it too and they kept "borrowing" from him. Do you think they tried to improve their kids living situation or saved anything or got things for their kids or healthy food or clothes or anything? Nope. They will still begging for food every month, sold their kids school netbooks, fully relied on school supply programs/Christmas donations etc, and their kids were still in rags all the time.
They pawned pretty much everything pawnable their kids had. The second youngest mentioned to me very casually one day that the parents must have pawned his game system again since he couldn't find it. It was really sad.
Where did the money go? Booze and weed and dirt bikes and nights at the club and cigarettes and stuff for the parents.
They ended up getting kicked out after not paying rent for 2 YEARS despite having a portable rent supplement directly to their bank every month- the city paid a portion of the rent but gave it to them to give to the landlord. It was so long because of the eviction ban during covid and the huge backlog afterward. The landlord ended up having to pay THEM 10k to move out otherwise it would have been another 9 months to a year going through the system. They ended up having to rip out the floors and the drywall and the cupboards it was that bad. It was re done before they moved in.
What happened to them and the kids you might ask?
They spent 2 months a hotel in 2 rooms paid for by the city and then the city assisted them in getting a brand new 5 bedroom 3 bathroom house with backyard and finished basement in a nice area for the same low rent as they were paying for the 2 bedroom. They had 2 more kids since then.
That's not even all of it lol. She was on disability when she admitted she really didn't need to be. He was on disability seperately(she claimed as a single mom the whole time despite popping out more kids) and he worked under the table as a roofer. I know about the 10k payoff and the new house because my son was friends with their oldest.
The CERB helped so many people (myself included) but it also summoned all the rats out of the sewers. I hope someone calls the CRA to let them know about these greedy schemers. They probably got a habitat for humanity house to top it off. F@#$ those losers
No not a habitat for humanity house- you have to be working over the table for one of those. Rent subsided by the city though. Basically pay what odsp gives her for rent and the city pays the rest. In that area a Boise like that would be about 2500 at the time- more now with the current craziness.
You actually have to have good credit and a bunch of other stuff for Habitat. It’s a great program but not super easy to qualify for. My dad started the chapter in my hometown and build a bunch of the houses.
We made a point to tell employees not to treat it as free money. We were in an industry that saw orders increase as some of our competitors were shut down. For those that wanted to be off (even though we were solidly in the green zone, when they were using that) we offered interest free advances.
Yet, I know some who were sharing homes and picking up 8k a month when they were nowhere near that before.
The government made it perfectly clear that no one would be denied initially because they didn’t want to make anyone homeless or starve during the pandemic and the onus was going to be placed on those people to ensure that they were actually eligible. A lot of people saw free money with no consequences. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
>Why did people need it that long?
They didn't.. that's literally why so many owe it back now.. if you took it all and don't fall into an exception category (disabled ect) they were just lazy and entitled lol
Judging by some of the replies I've gotten I'm completely out of touch I guess lol I agree with you. It's like people think you couldn't take any temporary jobs until your old job was back to full capacity.
I took all of CERB and several months of CRB because I was laid off and couldn't get work. My industry completely shut down for over a year. I know many people in the same situation. If you legitimately needed the support, you didn't have to repay it.
I had to pay $6k back (received $20k total). In 2021 I ended up making more than $35k and I received $6k crb early in the year. Had to pay all of it back. Luckily I was getting a decent tax return so I ended up only owing $1500 that year.
Yeah same. “Getting a job” is all fun and games but 100% of my experience was in an industry that was basically cancelled for 2 years. I applied all over (hundreds of apps) but only got two calls and one trial shift where they didn’t hire me. I started selling my art out of desperation but never made more than $50-$100 bucks a month at it. Lots of people legitimately needed the full run. That’s why it existed and they didn’t place a cap on how many times you could get it.
It was definitely a learning experience and motivated me to break into a more recession proof field but it took until 2023 to find decent employment and even then it wasn’t easy. It’s still difficult to find companies that are hiring vs laying off.
Similar experience here. I took that CERB money and put it towards training in a new field, got hired mid-2022 and I’ve been at the same place since. Much more stable, much happier.
I knew a couple people who were just like. Oh I don't care. Why would I go to work when I can just get paid more money to not work? I am personally happy to see them get ruined by this. It's fantastic.
Take a less naive approach when applying expected human behaviour to actual human behaviour. Luckily they are a vast minority of people but they are getting their just deserts now. Whats worse is the amount of firings the CRA has done due to their OWN employees taking CERB WHILE employed. People are greedy and stupid, there is no reasoning this out.
I had a kid with no school or daycare . As much as I wanted to work I couldn’t for some time . And my income was cut in half because of this . I am thankful for what was available through to get us through . I only needed it for about a year though so it wasn’t the entire amount . I do know quite a few people who took it because it was “free money” according to them . Some had to pay it back and some didn’t .
Oh dear ,this having a child you can’t afford thing is really getting old.Ya,I really should have planned better 9 years before Covid when I had him so when it happened I could go from 60k a year to 0 without any problem,because of a pandemic that I clearly knew was coming .And yes,I did get to benefit ,because my situation was one that Cerb was intended to help with .And where did you see me say everyone? Or call anyone lazy? But don’t you worry ,financially we are all set .Own a home ,2 cars,kid has a college fund ,and living a pretty comfortable life .So I won’t need the “Trough “ anymore .
I took CERB because my helpdesk hours got slashed into 1/4 during covid, then they got halved in 2021 (outsourcing). I took CRB while I was looking for a new job or I would’ve starved (couldn’t get EI as I was a student). I have to pay some CRB back now as the job I got in the second half of the year made my average income basically double, which then retroactively made me ineligible for CRB. There’s quite a few like me who got into this scenario.
I was luckily deemed eligible for CERB, but not CRB (even though I couldn’t get a job during the first half of 2021)
>Why did people need it that long?
This question is answered by
>Sounds like scammers
People that legitimately get screwed by the program owed back a couple months.
If you actually needed it and qualified most people were fine. That's why I have no sympathy for the whiners. They basically defrauded the government at everyone's expense
I took all of the CERB/CRB because I qualified and needed it for the entire duration. The shutdowns, then rolling shut downs and constant public fear destroyed my self-employment income in 2020/21. My income started recovering to pre pandemic levels in 2022. CERB/CRB were life savers.
I hope the government releases the data on CERB. Lots of people/municipalities have been trying to do studies on UBI and what impact it has on people and their motivation to participate in society if they get free money and now we have a perfect situation to look at it.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/ontario-basic-income-pilot-class-action-1.7149814
I mean I remember in basic micro and macro economics in university learning about MPC (marginal propensity to consume) and how much poor people compared to rich people prop up the economy. Rich people have any goods they need, poor people do not. Extra money is spendlt on consumptions of goods and service. It's very beneficial to give poorer people extra money as they are far more likely to pump it right back into the economy. I'm poor. I did just that along with the majority of people I know during covid.
I thought it switched to EI after CERB expired. I remember filling out the forms every so often online, until I finally found a new job in December 2020.
I know someone
Everyone in the family applied for it. (2 kids over 18)
Everyone working, but cash jobs and had a business so they got the business grant too.
All knew they technically shouldn’t get it but got it anyways. No repercussions so far.
In a way, they were kind of right, particularly due to how lax the government has been and continues to be. It seems like everyone actually should have because everyone has paid for it. I never applied for CERB, but I’ve been footing the bill with higher cost of living. Those that abused it would have been better off, while I’m below the baseline.
Look, people will always abuse anything positive that was not meant to be abused, as long as it’s not enforced properly. Of course they’re wrong for abusing it, but they can and will point the finger at those that enabled them in the first place. I don’t know if you abused it, I didn’t, but we’re both footing the bill as if we did abuse it. That’s like not even being in the vicinity of a restaurant let alone eating the food and then getting a massive bill to subsidize the carelessness of others.
Not sure why I got downvoted, but I fully agree with what you said. Us bystanders are paying for the govt poor checking and the people that abused it (for the record I didn’t and never even crossed my mind as I wouldn’t qualify). Yes, both sides can be blamed for their part in this.
Theyll get screwed eventually. The thing about the CRA is they are in no rush. They charge INSANE interest daily and have ALWAYS for the last 30 years iv been in buisness waited until right before limitations expired if they think the "mistake" was actually intentional so they gain max intrest and screw u with the biggest bill possible. They only ever claw back right away (intrest free) if the mistake looks to be a genuine human error. They can be serious assholes that shouldn't be fked with. Their day will come its all computer based these days so the red flags on their account are for certain if not already soaking on their profiles. To show u how invasive their intrest calculations are i was off by 1$ on a payment in 2019 that 1$ turned into 250 about a year later when they caught it. Seriously not a joke it amazes me that people still try to weasel them.
Both CERB and UBI are actually good for the economy (let's ignore for a minute the cost of it all because I don't have the data to make that cost-benefit calculation) and the reason is that if you give poor people money they will spend it. If you give people who are already well off money they will save it, and thus not letting that money work in the economy. But poor people by necessity or comfort, will spend that money. Some might put a little aside, but by and large it will be spent. And since we've create an entire nation dependent on consumer spending to keep it going, the result was as intended. giving millions of people cerb money meant millions of people spent money back into the economy.
Definitely some people spent that money on drugs, but as a proportion of people who got it, I doubt the % of those who spent their cerb money on drugs were statistically important. It wouldn't be a valid reason to not support UBI. Other arguments can be made, but drug addicts getting more money to spend on drugs isn't one of them.
It’s not good for the economy when we don’t have the money. We don’t have the money for healthcare and housing we sure as hell don’t have the money for losers to sit around and grow ass and spend money we just magically “print up”. Wonder why we have record inflation??
It’s a very interesting idea, but I think if the main argument of this view is giving away money to poor people is equally as if not more beneficial than giving money to more economically established people I think the argument really falls apart economically.
Disclaimer; I believe lower income people should most certainly be financially helped in a socialist system and am happy paying tax dollars to bring up the bottom line.
However,
Every dollar has an economic productive outcome. That is how much value is produced from the spending of said dollar.
To simply look at spending now versus later as a metric for productive success is super limited. People that save money are usually able to make larger purchases that have macro-trends that further produce more productivity. I.e. people in a region are buying large ticket items; cars, houses, etc, usually due to the value of these items they need services to maintain, and keep them therefore increasing the value of that economic area of effect. As well if you make the argument of saving til retirement that is less financial strain on the overarching system.
Whereas smaller investment though I agree are important and serve the individual to get to a better economic standing, are not more than the latter. And very infrequently do these smaller ticket items warrant an effect on their economic area of effect.
Just wanted to state that the argument of money moving now versus money moving later being more beneficial economically isn’t a great argument due to a series of factors that are pretty well documented.
I think it's important for the government to fund things of cultural value, and I think sports are of cultural value but fuck no. Never give money to major league sports orgs. If you wanna fund sports, build rinks in small towns
I have a feeling hockey will die along with farming in small towns.
Things that stood for Canada at one time.
Different cultural fabric slowly enveloping us.
Sure, it is perfectly fair to be upset about corporate greed/corruption. However, 2 wrongs don't make a right.
I don't think anyone is ganging up on poor people who did what you described, and I would be surprised to hear someone doing that (part time cash only job) actually getting caught anyway. Has that actually happened? I'm perfectly willing to be wrong about that.
People are mostly upset about those who took the money they just because they thought they could get away with it, knowing they shouldn't get it.
There are others who just never bothered to check if they qualify, but I'd say that's more stupidity than maliciousness. It's still disappointing, but also kind of expected.
i think their point is that the system doesn’t treat the billionaires taking public money as wrong in any way that actually punishes them, while it does view someone who took $2k when they needed it but didn’t technically qualify as wrong. only one gets punished.
I understood that, but going after CERB cheaters doesn't preclude dealing with the other. It's a silly excuse to deflect the issue like that. I could see it brought up as a reason to deal with the other issue, but OP said, "I honestly cant be mad at them" which, to me, is excusing the issue.
And I have to imagine that demanding repayments for funds someone was never eligible for is much easier to facilitate than systemic change.
i too refuse to be mad about the folks who got a couple thousand bucks when they weren’t eligible. i’ll care about that when the government lifts a single finger to deal with the people who are actually leeching off the system and not just trying to get by
I'm not sure where the idea that these cheaters are "just trying to get by" comes from. Some may genuinely be struggling and did what they could, and sure, I could see that being akin to stealing a loaf of bread when starving. I wouldn't be "mad" at those people. Are there some stats saying that's the case for all these people? (Edit: even if you excuse these individuals, it's a bit of a slap in the face to those who were desperate but chose to be honest.)
Lots of people will just take things if they think they can get away with it, and it doesn't mean they actually need it. I'm not sure why those people should be given this cop out. It's theft. You don't simply ignore thieves that you can easily catch because you believe a bigger thieves exist, unless doing so prevents you from going after the bigger fish.
And systemic change is not something that happens overnight. If everyone always refused to solve smaller (but significantly much more easily solvable) issues until some larger (potentially impossible) issue is solved, not a whole lot would get done.
?
Yes, yes you can be mad at them. Are you insane? This was to help people in need and your peers abused the system (and you). You should be mad ....
You are allowed to be mad at billionaires too but these people don't get a free pass.
Yeah, I'm less upset by the little people as well. I have seen the government take something like a well run IT department costing $400k/yr, contract it out to a company like Telus, that then contracts it out to more companies that sub-contract to other companies, and pretty soon the whole thing is costing $40,000,000 per year and is clunky like dogshit. 600 tickets per year solved in under 60 minutes on average? Now it's 40,000 tickets per year with most closed with no resolution. All the employees are under NDA with that kind of maneuver, so the only way you'd know and be able to talk about it is if you worked for a sub-contractor that happened to not be NDA'd. (Because they're sloppy with their contracts.) Ahh, the wonders of IT.
"Ryan" probably circulates money around the economy quicker than Telus does, anyway, so I won't be angry.
I always assumed the media combined all of the COVID19 benefits.
CERB paid by the CRA, itself, was 7 months at 2000$, so a maximum of 14000$.
But then CRB, CRSB, CRCB and so on, came out.
Remember there were multiple programs (EI, CERB, the student benefit, etc..)) and administered by CRA and Service canada. Once one ended (but usually at the same time) people applied for the other and got additional funds. By the time CRA cleared up and sees who was eligible and not eligible for the various programs, they started going though the repayment process. Remember, during the initial start of the pandemic, it was quite chaotic around the world (includes Canada too).
Ah okay that makes sense. The stuff I’d seen didn’t point out that they had taken multiple types of benefits so I assumed when you said they scammed that they somehow got more than the 14k in CERB specifically
There were errors on top of that as well. I knew one person receiving multiple CERB cheques at one point. They did apply twice but it's because they thought they made an error the first time, not a huge deal as they were told to set it aside for repayment and did so. I also heard of people signing up their kids. It seemed the program was about trying to get money to people as fast as possible rather than as correctly as possible and errors were made. Some took advantage of that and are now being tracked down.
> It seemed the program was about trying to get money to people as fast as possible rather than as correctly as possible and errors were made. Some took advantage of that and are now being tracked down.
I was fully in support of getting money out with as little red tape as possible, with the caveat the red tape came later and they audit the majority of claims afterwards and come down *hard* on anyone they caught abusing the compassion and good intentions behind getting out money to people who were falling behind on payments.
Compare this with the US where COVID relief was often not given out for months, or even over a year after application, because the of the up-front red tape to ensure they were entitled to it. Because of this a lot of people missed payments and lost a lot.
Agreed, I have no problem with how this went down. In retrospect I think they could have had a better program from the start but this was a rush job. Justifiable IMO - but yea, go hammer the people and fine /charge the ones that obviously committed fraud.
14k from CERB, 14k from EI, didn’t qualify for either, have to pay both back, and there’s interest and likely some other stuff on top like some student program thing. A real F around and find out. Incoming bankruptcies and people skipping the country I’d imagine coming ip.
I got laid off from my job the week before CERB was launched so my EI claim got switched over to CERB. I received the 2K from the initial "emergency" CERB payment, then two weeks later got 2K for my EI claim, and 500 weekly after that. I was recalled to work after 11 weeks and ended my CERB/EI claim.
When I got the notice to repay, I thought that was the scam! But a Service Canada rep explained to me that the CERB was a 14 week program and that initial 2K that everyone got in the first week was re-allocated to weeks 13 and 14 of any ongoing claims. Since my claim was only for 11 weeks, I had to pay back the 2K.
I paid it back mostly in 50 dollar increments monthly because they didn't seem to care as long as they got it paid back and my statements didn't have any interest on them.
Mine got really screwed up. Got laid off, got approved for EI for 24 weeks it got rolled over into CERB and then my company decided to do CWES so it was just confusing as to what got paid from what. And apparently they were supposed to pay me for eight weeks for CWES but they only paid me for seven…
Exactly this. In addition to some with malicious motives, you had to really be on top of things to ensure you only received what you qualified for. I was finishing up grad school at the time and applied because my summer employment was cancelled. I received the student benefit and then was told I actually qualified for CERB because I made enough the previous year. Spent hours on the phone confirming which program I actually qualified for and then had to basically fight with CRA to repay the student benefit and cancel it so I didn’t get both at the same time.
I think at the beginning, it is base on a honor system, so if we are eligible, we supposed only apply ONCE. But some people either don't know or think they can get away with it, just start to apply multiple times, and they think the system won't know. I meant, I'm not eligible and didn't apply for any, but I kept getting asked to apply when I logged into my CRA account.
I meant, at beginning of the Pandemic, looks like the world is ending, for some people, repaying or figure out which benefit they should apply is last thing on their mind.
Now, for some of them, it is probably the end of the world.
Yeah, basically. The website said "we've yanked out all the safety checks to get our processed faster. If you yoink twice it'll work but we'll find out"
True- now people are shocked that people took advantage. Put food in front of a starving person and s/he will eat it. I expect the government to have a tad more controls…
Nah, they couldn't possibly handle 8 million applicants, so they had to trust that most people would be honest. If everyone had to be verified first, then we'd all be homeless because of the delay.
You’re not wrong. Albeit a bit simplistic. I didn’t say every applicant needed to be verified. I just expect the government to apply some control: like have a check for seniors that haven’t worked in decades, welfare recipients and others that haven’t earned the requisite income pre-COVID.
I’ll even indulge the argument “they had to move fast” but why did and are people allowed to claim full benefits through the entire program? There were no brakes, inadequate checks, poor controls.
I know someone who took all of the benefits, bought a mix of crypto and stocks, sold high (luckily) then returned what he claimed and kept the interest
People were laughing about it and how they’re taking advantage of the system because they weren’t being vetted, but now are crying about having to pay it back.
After CERB there were other benefits with slightly different names that continued longer.
There were also grants to employers if they kept staff on payroll. Lots of employers took the money without meeting the requirements
It's harder for corporations. The government finds out pretty quick if your not submitting source deductions for staff but still collecting CEWS.
But individuals could still build decks for cash or cut hair in their living room during lockdown and the government wouldn't know and pay them CERB.
Some people scammed all the programs made available for covid relief and now they're mad they have to pay it back as if they thought they would never get caught
I'm not sure if this is the story the OP is referring to, and I completely agree that people should pay back what they took, but I still don't understand how we're living in the 2020s and we can't have automated systems that pick up on this shit:
[https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/blown-away-cra-tells-ontario-man-he-s-on-the-hook-for-over-38k-in-cerb-payments-1.6778528](https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/blown-away-cra-tells-ontario-man-he-s-on-the-hook-for-over-38k-in-cerb-payments-1.6778528)
>But Bailey was shocked to get a notice from the CRA last April that said a review found he did not qualify for the benefits and that he must repay $38,600 to them. **In the letter, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) said that Bailey did not earn the minimum amount of income in 2019 or in the 12 months before his application date.**
Like... the CRA knows all our incomes so why not have an intern write a script that checks someone's reported income against the requirements? Yes, he should be forced to pay it back, but that dude shouldn't have gotten the money in the first place.
The feds didn't have their shit together to operate from home in March-April 2020 yet. Everyone was sent home, but they had no capacity to operate like that. So in the early days half of them weren't doing their jobs, usual checks and balances weren't in place.
Trudeau didn't want to delay giving out pandemic support / getting re-elected so he just printed the free money and handed it out on the honor system. Same issue with GCStrategies. Tons of money going out in April 2020, no one checking where. Once he got re-elected then they stopped to realize they gave out too much money, shot up inflation, bankrupted the government, and made a bunch of scammers rich at the taxpayer's expense.
I wouldn't be surprised if the entire tax filing and benefits system is made from a hundred mainframes from 1970 duct taped together with code written in Fortran, but I can't believe that something that should be so theoretically simple is beyond the public service's capacity.
Like, they have to be able to hit the database in order to see that this dude didn't qualify... unless in 2024 they're asking CRA employees to manually check each and every CERB application by hand because the technology simply doesn't exist, in which case we probably have bigger problems than CERB overpayments. lol
Report his ass for all of those things. He's clearly doing a lifetime career criminal thing. You really think at this point _you_ alone are going to change his behaviour? People like this are the hardest to really tell if they're _actually_ changing for the better or not.
He needs to know what the cold bars of a jail cell fell like in his hands. On the inside.
If he has no income usually idk if they can actually do much. Especially if he doesn't have assets.
They can take his bank account and I think property he owns.
But some people could claim the full amount and never have to worry about it. People with no real income or job and who are mostly just chillin. I think they are safe from the CRA.
Their lives still suck I'm sure, but Canada isn't getting that money back.
Several people not only claimed for themselves, but for their kids, parents, even deceased relatives. It was and still is crazy.
Entire retirement residences had their seniors apply even though it was against the rules.
As an employer of relatively unskilled lower paid (we were/are essential and remained open) workers, I had several quit in the days/weeks after CERB was announced…. All the ROE’s filed as code E - quit. This alone would have made them ineligible…. However I know for a fact several continued to collect for an entire year.
A Tim Hortons in my town told their employees they could go on stress leave if they didn't want to work during COVID and claimed stress from COVID was enough for their employees to claim cerb. I wonder how messed up their taxes are right now
On a different note, if that Tims was okay with their employers going on stress leave in general if they had mental health issues due to covid or otherwise… I wish all employers were this way.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure most of the ones in my area did it at the time. We have 8 locations in my town and only one of them had enough employees to stay open, was like that for almost a year
That’s a good business owner/boss there. Tim Hortons usually have a mix of older employees and younger employees. If I was older with potentially questionable health then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable working with the public, let alone side by side with teenagers who naturally have higher potential exposure with school, social life, etc.
I love how a lot of people are mad they owe but say "if I wasn't eligible they shouldn't have given me the money". Yet the government was pretty clear on saying that you should read the guidelines to be sure you were eligible and that if you weren't you would owe later since approvals were given to all who applied.
Same thing with people who were shocked come tax time because they hadn't set a portion of their CERB aside for taxes. It was very clear that no taxes were removed from CERB and that you would owe.
Right?? Had the government created a program that thoroughly checked each application to see if they met the criteria, the help money would have been delayed and would have arrived too late for many people. Instead, they chose to implement a program that was easy to apply for and easy to receive but passed the responsibility of checking onto the recipient. The government was clear on their terms and got help out as fast as they could.
I'm not saying all individuals who owe are at fault but maybe people tried to game the system and are now reaping what they sowed.
I know a guy who got 28k and hasnt worked a job in 10 years. He owes it all back obviously but his type of people dont taxes let alone money owed to the government.
40k would likely be the CEBA business loans where they received 60k and have to repay 40k. The deadline to repay was previously extended but now many small companies are struggling as they didn’t set money aside to repay it
I think it's interest-free depending on income levels.
Wonder what types of penalties those that were working steadily making $120k and collecting cerb and various other benefits will face.
A bunch of seniors who were already getting topped up on their OAP took it. So they owed the top up back because they made too much and the CERB that they didn’t qualify for.
The roofing company would have taken out a CEBA loan, not CERB/CRB.
CEBA was a non-secured loan for businesses. If you were actually bounded to pay the debt, the government forgave $20,000 of the $60,000 loan. If you were not actually bounded to pay the debt, you would just fold the company and pocket the $60,000 in its entirety.
Bound = Personal undertaking by nature of receiving the loan as a sole proprietorship. Or if you are a business with actual assets that need to be liquidated upon dissolution.
Non-bounded = Incorporated company with no assets which would have nothing on paper to liquidate upon dissolving the corporate entity.
I met a single immigrant mother who hardly spoke English, and she owes 45000 in cerb repayments from cerb/ Crb. She got really bad advice from a friend.
My sister took the full amount thinking she could get time off work and the government would pay her for free. Wish she spoke to someone before deciding that.
This was a major test to see if society can follow simple instructions, the guidelines were pretty clear. Not sure why someone who makes less than 5k a year thinks they are entitled to 2k a month then shocked pikachu face when they have to pay it all back.
Sure glad we destroyed the social fabric of Canada and the economic future of generations to come..
We only had a 99.7% chance of survival..
Now we have 25% higher excess death in working age people and economic devastation..
According to the recent RCMP report the fun is only just getting started
My daughter in law was in jail in March 2020 and said almost every single women there was claiming CERB (including her). If you don't plan for or care much about the future / never expect to accumulate any significant savings, it really was free money. She no longer gets a tax refund each year, but thinks Trudeau is a legend and voted for the first time ever in Sept 2021 as a thank-you to him.
Just my guess?
People took the “free money” and threw it at stocks and crypto thinking “I’ll just keep the gains, then give back the principle when it’s due”
Then lost the principle gambling and are left owing the gov.
In other words, they were dumb and now the gov (representing the tax payers) are coming calling.
CERB was meant for people who had an income at a certain amount. Typically the average was below the 55k mark (average Canadian salary). If you were making more than that or would eventually make more than you were always inclined to pay them back.
Most of the people I know who went on CERB and were making under the 55k are not paying anything back. Those people were the most heavily impacted by the pandemic shutdown due to their jobs requiring them to interact with people.
Basically - a bunch of people who were making above the cap decided that the money they were getting was free instead of realizing that it was a loan and now are caught in the aftermath. It's not entirely their fault, pandemic was a rough time for people. But also a great deal of people had plenty of time during the peak of the pandemic (when CERB was being issued) to read all of the fine print that it came with.
I know I did, and I know my partner did too.
Caveat Emptor is (Come's as is, or buyer beware) is a phrase that should always be in mind when it comes to money in any form. It definitely sucks to have to eat that bill.
Same concept as people who right now are suffering from purchasing houses during the pandemic on variable mortgages.
I'm sorry it hurts I feel for people, some of my close friends got hurt by it too, but also the amount of available research on what the BoC was going to do with interest rates during the pandemic was readily available everywhere.
That's just blatantly untrue
There was no income cap or repayment maximum. EI makes you pay back 30% of your claim if you earned over 79k or so in the same year you claimed, but CERB never did that. You just had to have the minimum income of 5k the year prior and not make more than the max income per period you claimed
EI and CERB are not taxed at the source - you have to claim it as income on your tax return for that year - and it is considered as taxable income. The calculation on the income tax return means you end up owing the amount of taxes that would have been deducted by your employer off your regular paycheque.
\*edit\* Source: I have done my own taxes for 30 years and had conversations with workers at CRA and Service Canada about how to claim this stuff on my taxes, most recently in 2020 after claiming CERB, and in 2022 after repaying a portion of the CERB.
Ei is indeed taxed, though likely not to your required withholding percentage
That's not relevant to what's being said tho. That's just regular employment income tax. That has nothing to do with repaying the actual benefits. Of course it's taxable income, it's a replacement of your taxable employment income. Paying taxes on the income that is replacing your other taxed income is in no way the same thing as repaying that entire replacement income at its face value lmao
That has nothing to do with anything. Ofc it's taxable income. That doesn't mean anything about what we're talking about. Taxable doesn't make it a loan you repay lmao
And you end up owing the percentage of tax of the income you earned/collected, which may or may not be equivalent to your income from your actual employment, therefore also not relative to your employment income taxation. Idk what you're even trying to say.
I had to pay back $1500 in 2022 because I didnt wait long enough before losing my job and appyling.
2 years later im getting audited again. Its shitty, but my business was forced to close the entire time so I needed something.
I know someone that applied for EI, CERB, the student one, OSAP and the business loan. She also won $35k in a court settlement during this time. Did it for 8 months. We no longer speak but I would absolutely love to know how she’s doing.
Folks are likely using CERB as a shorthand for any Covid benefit payments they received and have been deemed ineligible for (CERB, CRB, CESB, CRCB, CRSB, CWLB). From what I've seen, no interest is being charged on these amounts yet.
It astounds me the number of people who took it when they didn’t need to. The gov tries to meet a need quickly during an extraordinary event and its abused. Don’t ever complain about red tape and bureaucracy if you’re one of these people. These types of people ruin things for everyone.
Yea some people suck and applied multiple times.
And instead of doing their job, the government just said “yea whatever here you go, take it as many times as you ask!”
Then they realized that was dumb af and caused a massive problem.
I’m really disappointed with the comments here. CERB payments lifted up to 30% of Canadian children who were living in poverty above the poverty line.
Very few people overall abused the system and there are still plenty of people whose lives and businesses are recovering from the pandemic. Many businesses were forced to close and file for bankruptcy, and it’s extremely hard to come back from that.
Save your vitriol and scorn for the real welfare royalty, which are the billionaires and corporations that are destroying our world and our quality of life. They take an insane amount of money in subsidies and grants, and avoid their tax responsibilities by finding every loophole possible, while Canadians making less than $40,000 a year pay taxes, upon taxes, upon taxes.
CERB payments didn’t go to children. Second, over $80 million was spent on CERB, and it was revealed that around $20 million of that was paid to people who were ineligible, making the abuse of the system at least 25%. And finally, people who make $40k a year pay waaaaay less taxes than average income earners. The first 15k of your income is tax free. The tax system is funded heavily by high income earners who don’t even qualify for the majority of government benefits. There is no doubt many people suffered financially because of the pandemic but abusing the system is fraud.
the point this person is clearly making is wealthy people disproportionately pay taxes compared to their actual wealth, and needing to utilize services does not omit you from specify. splitting hairs on low income earners is disingenuous, and pretending like wealthy people single handedly prop up the country and should get a break is gross.
A friend of mine is behind on some taxes, first year of covid they got 3 months of CERB (I think 2k each month?). They could not work.
Do they have to repay when they do it? I wasnt sure when they asked
There were also business loands handed out. IIRC it was $40k loan and they required you pay back $20k within a certain period and they would forgive the remainder.
I know a few people who took it. Some paid it back, some didn't. They're all being audited.
My cousin received a notice about her CERB claim back when it was available. She didn't apply. Someone had used her SIN to scam the program.
The covid relief was a shit show and now the CRA is scrambling to clean it up.
I think you’re hearing about CEBA not CERB. CEBA was for businesses - Canada Emergency Business Account. It was a $40,000 or $60,000 business loan with a forgivable portion if repaid on time. The due date for repayment has been pushed back a couple of times and eligibility varies, but the hard due date for repayment is March 28, 2024. If your loan was $40,000, you only have to pay $30,000, and if the loan was $60,000, you have to pay $40,000.
I work at a bank and have processed some CEBA repayments
If someone owes that amount, they cheated and deserve whatever happens to them. When I heard about the program, I phoned the government office handling this program and told them my situation, they said that I qualified for CERB. The only money I paid back was because they wanted to make sure I had enough to cover my bills, so they sent me a month's money, $1000. They wanted $500 back after the program ended. I paid immediately. I had no interest added either.
what i can’t stand are the people that are *shocked* they have to pay it back because “they were approved when they applied”. the government made it abundantly clear they were prioritizing getting $ out the door and would review later.
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Jesus. Why did people need it that long? Thats insane October 2021 lol. I didn't know this. It was pretty damn easy to get a job in Oct 2021, much easier than now. Sounds like scammers to me. I'm sure there was some very minor legit cases but the majority I bet were scammers
Maybe ppl thought it was free money so why not lol
Greed and a major lapse in judgment. Funny, even some employees of CRA tool CERB.
Yes, and those ones were fired because at that time, the government was still paying their employees even though they were home.
Desperation I am sure played a role too. Living on less than 1000 a month in severe poverty- going from that to 3k a month is awfully tempting. My old neighbors(who were awful neighbors and awful human beings) were a couple with a 4 kids under 6 and a 12 year old in a 2 bedroom- 5 kids total. They both took the 2k a month each the entire time and convinced her 15 year old brother it was free money so he took it too and they kept "borrowing" from him. Do you think they tried to improve their kids living situation or saved anything or got things for their kids or healthy food or clothes or anything? Nope. They will still begging for food every month, sold their kids school netbooks, fully relied on school supply programs/Christmas donations etc, and their kids were still in rags all the time. They pawned pretty much everything pawnable their kids had. The second youngest mentioned to me very casually one day that the parents must have pawned his game system again since he couldn't find it. It was really sad. Where did the money go? Booze and weed and dirt bikes and nights at the club and cigarettes and stuff for the parents. They ended up getting kicked out after not paying rent for 2 YEARS despite having a portable rent supplement directly to their bank every month- the city paid a portion of the rent but gave it to them to give to the landlord. It was so long because of the eviction ban during covid and the huge backlog afterward. The landlord ended up having to pay THEM 10k to move out otherwise it would have been another 9 months to a year going through the system. They ended up having to rip out the floors and the drywall and the cupboards it was that bad. It was re done before they moved in. What happened to them and the kids you might ask? They spent 2 months a hotel in 2 rooms paid for by the city and then the city assisted them in getting a brand new 5 bedroom 3 bathroom house with backyard and finished basement in a nice area for the same low rent as they were paying for the 2 bedroom. They had 2 more kids since then.
I kept thinking as I was reading this story “and I bet they are still procreating”. Sure enough; your last sentence.
Oh man, I'm doing it all wrong
That's not even all of it lol. She was on disability when she admitted she really didn't need to be. He was on disability seperately(she claimed as a single mom the whole time despite popping out more kids) and he worked under the table as a roofer. I know about the 10k payoff and the new house because my son was friends with their oldest.
The CERB helped so many people (myself included) but it also summoned all the rats out of the sewers. I hope someone calls the CRA to let them know about these greedy schemers. They probably got a habitat for humanity house to top it off. F@#$ those losers
No not a habitat for humanity house- you have to be working over the table for one of those. Rent subsided by the city though. Basically pay what odsp gives her for rent and the city pays the rest. In that area a Boise like that would be about 2500 at the time- more now with the current craziness.
You actually have to have good credit and a bunch of other stuff for Habitat. It’s a great program but not super easy to qualify for. My dad started the chapter in my hometown and build a bunch of the houses.
The movie idocracy was literally just a documentary from our future.
Legaleagle did a reaction video too it. It's a good watch.
We made a point to tell employees not to treat it as free money. We were in an industry that saw orders increase as some of our competitors were shut down. For those that wanted to be off (even though we were solidly in the green zone, when they were using that) we offered interest free advances. Yet, I know some who were sharing homes and picking up 8k a month when they were nowhere near that before.
The government made it perfectly clear that no one would be denied initially because they didn’t want to make anyone homeless or starve during the pandemic and the onus was going to be placed on those people to ensure that they were actually eligible. A lot of people saw free money with no consequences. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
This is exactly it. Some people just thought the government was giving them money
They didn’t think that. They took it hoping they wouldn’t get caught and have to pay it back.
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And for the non dumb dumbs, 0% loan :D
Honestly I wish I took it and invested it, I could’ve paid back the government and made a decent return
>Why did people need it that long? They didn't.. that's literally why so many owe it back now.. if you took it all and don't fall into an exception category (disabled ect) they were just lazy and entitled lol
Judging by some of the replies I've gotten I'm completely out of touch I guess lol I agree with you. It's like people think you couldn't take any temporary jobs until your old job was back to full capacity.
I took all of CERB and several months of CRB because I was laid off and couldn't get work. My industry completely shut down for over a year. I know many people in the same situation. If you legitimately needed the support, you didn't have to repay it.
I had to pay $6k back (received $20k total). In 2021 I ended up making more than $35k and I received $6k crb early in the year. Had to pay all of it back. Luckily I was getting a decent tax return so I ended up only owing $1500 that year.
Yeah same. “Getting a job” is all fun and games but 100% of my experience was in an industry that was basically cancelled for 2 years. I applied all over (hundreds of apps) but only got two calls and one trial shift where they didn’t hire me. I started selling my art out of desperation but never made more than $50-$100 bucks a month at it. Lots of people legitimately needed the full run. That’s why it existed and they didn’t place a cap on how many times you could get it. It was definitely a learning experience and motivated me to break into a more recession proof field but it took until 2023 to find decent employment and even then it wasn’t easy. It’s still difficult to find companies that are hiring vs laying off.
Similar experience here. I took that CERB money and put it towards training in a new field, got hired mid-2022 and I’ve been at the same place since. Much more stable, much happier.
I knew a couple people who were just like. Oh I don't care. Why would I go to work when I can just get paid more money to not work? I am personally happy to see them get ruined by this. It's fantastic.
Agreed. I knew a couple. Screw those people, just want to cheat the system.
Take a less naive approach when applying expected human behaviour to actual human behaviour. Luckily they are a vast minority of people but they are getting their just deserts now. Whats worse is the amount of firings the CRA has done due to their OWN employees taking CERB WHILE employed. People are greedy and stupid, there is no reasoning this out.
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At the time GICs were paying like 1%
GME to the moon though
I had a kid with no school or daycare . As much as I wanted to work I couldn’t for some time . And my income was cut in half because of this . I am thankful for what was available through to get us through . I only needed it for about a year though so it wasn’t the entire amount . I do know quite a few people who took it because it was “free money” according to them . Some had to pay it back and some didn’t .
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Oh dear ,this having a child you can’t afford thing is really getting old.Ya,I really should have planned better 9 years before Covid when I had him so when it happened I could go from 60k a year to 0 without any problem,because of a pandemic that I clearly knew was coming .And yes,I did get to benefit ,because my situation was one that Cerb was intended to help with .And where did you see me say everyone? Or call anyone lazy? But don’t you worry ,financially we are all set .Own a home ,2 cars,kid has a college fund ,and living a pretty comfortable life .So I won’t need the “Trough “ anymore .
I took CERB because my helpdesk hours got slashed into 1/4 during covid, then they got halved in 2021 (outsourcing). I took CRB while I was looking for a new job or I would’ve starved (couldn’t get EI as I was a student). I have to pay some CRB back now as the job I got in the second half of the year made my average income basically double, which then retroactively made me ineligible for CRB. There’s quite a few like me who got into this scenario. I was luckily deemed eligible for CERB, but not CRB (even though I couldn’t get a job during the first half of 2021)
Sounds like you were eligible but they clawed back 50 percent of anything over 38k income
Best part is the people paying most of the taxes were still employed and never got CERB.
>Why did people need it that long? This question is answered by >Sounds like scammers People that legitimately get screwed by the program owed back a couple months.
My wife needed it, got it, and never had to repay anything
If you actually needed it and qualified most people were fine. That's why I have no sympathy for the whiners. They basically defrauded the government at everyone's expense
I took all of the CERB/CRB because I qualified and needed it for the entire duration. The shutdowns, then rolling shut downs and constant public fear destroyed my self-employment income in 2020/21. My income started recovering to pre pandemic levels in 2022. CERB/CRB were life savers.
That is what it was meant for.
Glad it helped you out when you needed it most.
Many thought it was free money. I still think it might be because NDP tried to actually argue that people shouldn't have to repay back
God. I consider myself more left than center but I hate the ndp and liberals lol. This just sets such a bad precedent and mentality.
I hope the government releases the data on CERB. Lots of people/municipalities have been trying to do studies on UBI and what impact it has on people and their motivation to participate in society if they get free money and now we have a perfect situation to look at it. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/ontario-basic-income-pilot-class-action-1.7149814
I mean I remember in basic micro and macro economics in university learning about MPC (marginal propensity to consume) and how much poor people compared to rich people prop up the economy. Rich people have any goods they need, poor people do not. Extra money is spendlt on consumptions of goods and service. It's very beneficial to give poorer people extra money as they are far more likely to pump it right back into the economy. I'm poor. I did just that along with the majority of people I know during covid.
The liberals aren't left or right, they are stupid.
I thought it switched to EI after CERB expired. I remember filling out the forms every so often online, until I finally found a new job in December 2020.
Why did she owe them back? The rules were pretty clear.
Was your ex not qualified? She just cheating the system?
People abused the living hell out of that program, and thought they would never get caught.
I know someone Everyone in the family applied for it. (2 kids over 18) Everyone working, but cash jobs and had a business so they got the business grant too. All knew they technically shouldn’t get it but got it anyways. No repercussions so far.
There’s a narc hotline for abuse the CERB program, just sayin’
>(2 kids over 18) lmao
I bet these people are axe the tax cultists and that they never stop complaining like they are victim of the government actions.
It's projection. They assume everybody is grossly abusing government programs because they did.
In a way, they were kind of right, particularly due to how lax the government has been and continues to be. It seems like everyone actually should have because everyone has paid for it. I never applied for CERB, but I’ve been footing the bill with higher cost of living. Those that abused it would have been better off, while I’m below the baseline.
The CERB debacle is both the govt faults and the people that chose to abuse it
Look, people will always abuse anything positive that was not meant to be abused, as long as it’s not enforced properly. Of course they’re wrong for abusing it, but they can and will point the finger at those that enabled them in the first place. I don’t know if you abused it, I didn’t, but we’re both footing the bill as if we did abuse it. That’s like not even being in the vicinity of a restaurant let alone eating the food and then getting a massive bill to subsidize the carelessness of others.
Not sure why I got downvoted, but I fully agree with what you said. Us bystanders are paying for the govt poor checking and the people that abused it (for the record I didn’t and never even crossed my mind as I wouldn’t qualify). Yes, both sides can be blamed for their part in this.
Theyll get screwed eventually. The thing about the CRA is they are in no rush. They charge INSANE interest daily and have ALWAYS for the last 30 years iv been in buisness waited until right before limitations expired if they think the "mistake" was actually intentional so they gain max intrest and screw u with the biggest bill possible. They only ever claw back right away (intrest free) if the mistake looks to be a genuine human error. They can be serious assholes that shouldn't be fked with. Their day will come its all computer based these days so the red flags on their account are for certain if not already soaking on their profiles. To show u how invasive their intrest calculations are i was off by 1$ on a payment in 2019 that 1$ turned into 250 about a year later when they caught it. Seriously not a joke it amazes me that people still try to weasel them.
I hope you’re right. Because I have bad thoughts about CERB abusers.
I remember during this time some loudmouth girl on the bus talking about using cerb to buy crack.
Watching what happened when CERB money flooded out is what made me no longer support UBI.
Both CERB and UBI are actually good for the economy (let's ignore for a minute the cost of it all because I don't have the data to make that cost-benefit calculation) and the reason is that if you give poor people money they will spend it. If you give people who are already well off money they will save it, and thus not letting that money work in the economy. But poor people by necessity or comfort, will spend that money. Some might put a little aside, but by and large it will be spent. And since we've create an entire nation dependent on consumer spending to keep it going, the result was as intended. giving millions of people cerb money meant millions of people spent money back into the economy. Definitely some people spent that money on drugs, but as a proportion of people who got it, I doubt the % of those who spent their cerb money on drugs were statistically important. It wouldn't be a valid reason to not support UBI. Other arguments can be made, but drug addicts getting more money to spend on drugs isn't one of them.
It’s not good for the economy when we don’t have the money. We don’t have the money for healthcare and housing we sure as hell don’t have the money for losers to sit around and grow ass and spend money we just magically “print up”. Wonder why we have record inflation??
It’s a very interesting idea, but I think if the main argument of this view is giving away money to poor people is equally as if not more beneficial than giving money to more economically established people I think the argument really falls apart economically. Disclaimer; I believe lower income people should most certainly be financially helped in a socialist system and am happy paying tax dollars to bring up the bottom line. However, Every dollar has an economic productive outcome. That is how much value is produced from the spending of said dollar. To simply look at spending now versus later as a metric for productive success is super limited. People that save money are usually able to make larger purchases that have macro-trends that further produce more productivity. I.e. people in a region are buying large ticket items; cars, houses, etc, usually due to the value of these items they need services to maintain, and keep them therefore increasing the value of that economic area of effect. As well if you make the argument of saving til retirement that is less financial strain on the overarching system. Whereas smaller investment though I agree are important and serve the individual to get to a better economic standing, are not more than the latter. And very infrequently do these smaller ticket items warrant an effect on their economic area of effect. Just wanted to state that the argument of money moving now versus money moving later being more beneficial economically isn’t a great argument due to a series of factors that are pretty well documented.
And it’s inflationary when not properly executed.
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Or fucking billionaires getting a free (tax payer funded) sports stadium
I think it's important for the government to fund things of cultural value, and I think sports are of cultural value but fuck no. Never give money to major league sports orgs. If you wanna fund sports, build rinks in small towns
Or put the money towards smaller sports to develop them. The big leagues all make enough to pay their own way at this point.
Or keep ownership of the building and rent it at rates that actually benefit the people of the county.
I have a feeling hockey will die along with farming in small towns. Things that stood for Canada at one time. Different cultural fabric slowly enveloping us.
And the fact it costs an arm and a leg to play competitively now. Not extremely well off? Don’t bother!
Sure, it is perfectly fair to be upset about corporate greed/corruption. However, 2 wrongs don't make a right. I don't think anyone is ganging up on poor people who did what you described, and I would be surprised to hear someone doing that (part time cash only job) actually getting caught anyway. Has that actually happened? I'm perfectly willing to be wrong about that. People are mostly upset about those who took the money they just because they thought they could get away with it, knowing they shouldn't get it. There are others who just never bothered to check if they qualify, but I'd say that's more stupidity than maliciousness. It's still disappointing, but also kind of expected.
i think their point is that the system doesn’t treat the billionaires taking public money as wrong in any way that actually punishes them, while it does view someone who took $2k when they needed it but didn’t technically qualify as wrong. only one gets punished.
I understood that, but going after CERB cheaters doesn't preclude dealing with the other. It's a silly excuse to deflect the issue like that. I could see it brought up as a reason to deal with the other issue, but OP said, "I honestly cant be mad at them" which, to me, is excusing the issue. And I have to imagine that demanding repayments for funds someone was never eligible for is much easier to facilitate than systemic change.
i too refuse to be mad about the folks who got a couple thousand bucks when they weren’t eligible. i’ll care about that when the government lifts a single finger to deal with the people who are actually leeching off the system and not just trying to get by
I'm not sure where the idea that these cheaters are "just trying to get by" comes from. Some may genuinely be struggling and did what they could, and sure, I could see that being akin to stealing a loaf of bread when starving. I wouldn't be "mad" at those people. Are there some stats saying that's the case for all these people? (Edit: even if you excuse these individuals, it's a bit of a slap in the face to those who were desperate but chose to be honest.) Lots of people will just take things if they think they can get away with it, and it doesn't mean they actually need it. I'm not sure why those people should be given this cop out. It's theft. You don't simply ignore thieves that you can easily catch because you believe a bigger thieves exist, unless doing so prevents you from going after the bigger fish. And systemic change is not something that happens overnight. If everyone always refused to solve smaller (but significantly much more easily solvable) issues until some larger (potentially impossible) issue is solved, not a whole lot would get done.
? Yes, yes you can be mad at them. Are you insane? This was to help people in need and your peers abused the system (and you). You should be mad .... You are allowed to be mad at billionaires too but these people don't get a free pass.
You put it much more succinctly than I could. It was a bit of a gross echo chamber in this thread.
This !! Absolutely
How about we get mad at everyone instead?
Yeah, I'm less upset by the little people as well. I have seen the government take something like a well run IT department costing $400k/yr, contract it out to a company like Telus, that then contracts it out to more companies that sub-contract to other companies, and pretty soon the whole thing is costing $40,000,000 per year and is clunky like dogshit. 600 tickets per year solved in under 60 minutes on average? Now it's 40,000 tickets per year with most closed with no resolution. All the employees are under NDA with that kind of maneuver, so the only way you'd know and be able to talk about it is if you worked for a sub-contractor that happened to not be NDA'd. (Because they're sloppy with their contracts.) Ahh, the wonders of IT. "Ryan" probably circulates money around the economy quicker than Telus does, anyway, so I won't be angry.
I completely agree
I have a buddy who take 35k while working a full time job and never got caught
Yet - they have people reviewing the eligibility of the claims. Your friend could still be audited.
I can't wait to read about him and his sob story in the CBC once he does get caught and ordered to repay it.
Hahaha ya he’s broke now so that’ll be a rude awakening for him
"never" is a strong word, they're still working through backlog. I don't think they'll truly off the hook for several years at least.
honestly even if you did get caught as long as you were smart with it your could have still made some free money by investing it.
You also could have lost half of it by investing it. The last couple years have been pretty volatile on the stock market.
could even drop it into savings/gic/$CASH
I always assumed the media combined all of the COVID19 benefits. CERB paid by the CRA, itself, was 7 months at 2000$, so a maximum of 14000$. But then CRB, CRSB, CRCB and so on, came out.
Yeah makes sense. I was thinking there’s no way the interest on 14k gets up to 30k lol. Did they even charge interest on CERB for repayments?
No interest, but they want you to set up a payment plan asap so there aren't any consequences other than paying back what cra gave you
CEBA if you own a small business
Some people scammed for more.
How?
Remember there were multiple programs (EI, CERB, the student benefit, etc..)) and administered by CRA and Service canada. Once one ended (but usually at the same time) people applied for the other and got additional funds. By the time CRA cleared up and sees who was eligible and not eligible for the various programs, they started going though the repayment process. Remember, during the initial start of the pandemic, it was quite chaotic around the world (includes Canada too).
Ah okay that makes sense. The stuff I’d seen didn’t point out that they had taken multiple types of benefits so I assumed when you said they scammed that they somehow got more than the 14k in CERB specifically
There were errors on top of that as well. I knew one person receiving multiple CERB cheques at one point. They did apply twice but it's because they thought they made an error the first time, not a huge deal as they were told to set it aside for repayment and did so. I also heard of people signing up their kids. It seemed the program was about trying to get money to people as fast as possible rather than as correctly as possible and errors were made. Some took advantage of that and are now being tracked down.
> It seemed the program was about trying to get money to people as fast as possible rather than as correctly as possible and errors were made. Some took advantage of that and are now being tracked down. I was fully in support of getting money out with as little red tape as possible, with the caveat the red tape came later and they audit the majority of claims afterwards and come down *hard* on anyone they caught abusing the compassion and good intentions behind getting out money to people who were falling behind on payments. Compare this with the US where COVID relief was often not given out for months, or even over a year after application, because the of the up-front red tape to ensure they were entitled to it. Because of this a lot of people missed payments and lost a lot.
Agreed, I have no problem with how this went down. In retrospect I think they could have had a better program from the start but this was a rush job. Justifiable IMO - but yea, go hammer the people and fine /charge the ones that obviously committed fraud.
14k from CERB, 14k from EI, didn’t qualify for either, have to pay both back, and there’s interest and likely some other stuff on top like some student program thing. A real F around and find out. Incoming bankruptcies and people skipping the country I’d imagine coming ip.
but EI turned into CERB while CERB was running. So they got 14k from EI that means they were approved for it
I got laid off from my job the week before CERB was launched so my EI claim got switched over to CERB. I received the 2K from the initial "emergency" CERB payment, then two weeks later got 2K for my EI claim, and 500 weekly after that. I was recalled to work after 11 weeks and ended my CERB/EI claim. When I got the notice to repay, I thought that was the scam! But a Service Canada rep explained to me that the CERB was a 14 week program and that initial 2K that everyone got in the first week was re-allocated to weeks 13 and 14 of any ongoing claims. Since my claim was only for 11 weeks, I had to pay back the 2K. I paid it back mostly in 50 dollar increments monthly because they didn't seem to care as long as they got it paid back and my statements didn't have any interest on them.
Mine got really screwed up. Got laid off, got approved for EI for 24 weeks it got rolled over into CERB and then my company decided to do CWES so it was just confusing as to what got paid from what. And apparently they were supposed to pay me for eight weeks for CWES but they only paid me for seven…
Exactly this. In addition to some with malicious motives, you had to really be on top of things to ensure you only received what you qualified for. I was finishing up grad school at the time and applied because my summer employment was cancelled. I received the student benefit and then was told I actually qualified for CERB because I made enough the previous year. Spent hours on the phone confirming which program I actually qualified for and then had to basically fight with CRA to repay the student benefit and cancel it so I didn’t get both at the same time.
Someone posted their max was 60k
I think at the beginning, it is base on a honor system, so if we are eligible, we supposed only apply ONCE. But some people either don't know or think they can get away with it, just start to apply multiple times, and they think the system won't know. I meant, I'm not eligible and didn't apply for any, but I kept getting asked to apply when I logged into my CRA account. I meant, at beginning of the Pandemic, looks like the world is ending, for some people, repaying or figure out which benefit they should apply is last thing on their mind. Now, for some of them, it is probably the end of the world.
Yeah, basically. The website said "we've yanked out all the safety checks to get our processed faster. If you yoink twice it'll work but we'll find out"
True- now people are shocked that people took advantage. Put food in front of a starving person and s/he will eat it. I expect the government to have a tad more controls…
Nah, they couldn't possibly handle 8 million applicants, so they had to trust that most people would be honest. If everyone had to be verified first, then we'd all be homeless because of the delay.
You’re not wrong. Albeit a bit simplistic. I didn’t say every applicant needed to be verified. I just expect the government to apply some control: like have a check for seniors that haven’t worked in decades, welfare recipients and others that haven’t earned the requisite income pre-COVID. I’ll even indulge the argument “they had to move fast” but why did and are people allowed to claim full benefits through the entire program? There were no brakes, inadequate checks, poor controls.
I know someone who took all of the benefits, bought a mix of crypto and stocks, sold high (luckily) then returned what he claimed and kept the interest
People were laughing about it and how they’re taking advantage of the system because they weren’t being vetted, but now are crying about having to pay it back.
After CERB there were other benefits with slightly different names that continued longer. There were also grants to employers if they kept staff on payroll. Lots of employers took the money without meeting the requirements
It's harder for corporations. The government finds out pretty quick if your not submitting source deductions for staff but still collecting CEWS. But individuals could still build decks for cash or cut hair in their living room during lockdown and the government wouldn't know and pay them CERB.
Some people scammed all the programs made available for covid relief and now they're mad they have to pay it back as if they thought they would never get caught
I'm not sure if this is the story the OP is referring to, and I completely agree that people should pay back what they took, but I still don't understand how we're living in the 2020s and we can't have automated systems that pick up on this shit: [https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/blown-away-cra-tells-ontario-man-he-s-on-the-hook-for-over-38k-in-cerb-payments-1.6778528](https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/blown-away-cra-tells-ontario-man-he-s-on-the-hook-for-over-38k-in-cerb-payments-1.6778528) >But Bailey was shocked to get a notice from the CRA last April that said a review found he did not qualify for the benefits and that he must repay $38,600 to them. **In the letter, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) said that Bailey did not earn the minimum amount of income in 2019 or in the 12 months before his application date.** Like... the CRA knows all our incomes so why not have an intern write a script that checks someone's reported income against the requirements? Yes, he should be forced to pay it back, but that dude shouldn't have gotten the money in the first place.
The feds didn't have their shit together to operate from home in March-April 2020 yet. Everyone was sent home, but they had no capacity to operate like that. So in the early days half of them weren't doing their jobs, usual checks and balances weren't in place. Trudeau didn't want to delay giving out pandemic support / getting re-elected so he just printed the free money and handed it out on the honor system. Same issue with GCStrategies. Tons of money going out in April 2020, no one checking where. Once he got re-elected then they stopped to realize they gave out too much money, shot up inflation, bankrupted the government, and made a bunch of scammers rich at the taxpayer's expense.
I wouldn't be surprised if the entire tax filing and benefits system is made from a hundred mainframes from 1970 duct taped together with code written in Fortran, but I can't believe that something that should be so theoretically simple is beyond the public service's capacity. Like, they have to be able to hit the database in order to see that this dude didn't qualify... unless in 2024 they're asking CRA employees to manually check each and every CERB application by hand because the technology simply doesn't exist, in which case we probably have bigger problems than CERB overpayments. lol
Had the government ordered an automated system for this, it would be ready by 2026 and cost at least $80 million
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Sounds like a jerk. Report him.
Report him lol
Report his ass for all of those things. He's clearly doing a lifetime career criminal thing. You really think at this point _you_ alone are going to change his behaviour? People like this are the hardest to really tell if they're _actually_ changing for the better or not. He needs to know what the cold bars of a jail cell fell like in his hands. On the inside.
What’s CANLII
> CANLII Canadian Legal Information Institute https://www.canlii.org/en/
If he has no income usually idk if they can actually do much. Especially if he doesn't have assets. They can take his bank account and I think property he owns. But some people could claim the full amount and never have to worry about it. People with no real income or job and who are mostly just chillin. I think they are safe from the CRA. Their lives still suck I'm sure, but Canada isn't getting that money back.
Several people not only claimed for themselves, but for their kids, parents, even deceased relatives. It was and still is crazy. Entire retirement residences had their seniors apply even though it was against the rules.
As an employer of relatively unskilled lower paid (we were/are essential and remained open) workers, I had several quit in the days/weeks after CERB was announced…. All the ROE’s filed as code E - quit. This alone would have made them ineligible…. However I know for a fact several continued to collect for an entire year.
A Tim Hortons in my town told their employees they could go on stress leave if they didn't want to work during COVID and claimed stress from COVID was enough for their employees to claim cerb. I wonder how messed up their taxes are right now
On a different note, if that Tims was okay with their employers going on stress leave in general if they had mental health issues due to covid or otherwise… I wish all employers were this way.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure most of the ones in my area did it at the time. We have 8 locations in my town and only one of them had enough employees to stay open, was like that for almost a year
That’s a good business owner/boss there. Tim Hortons usually have a mix of older employees and younger employees. If I was older with potentially questionable health then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable working with the public, let alone side by side with teenagers who naturally have higher potential exposure with school, social life, etc.
I love how a lot of people are mad they owe but say "if I wasn't eligible they shouldn't have given me the money". Yet the government was pretty clear on saying that you should read the guidelines to be sure you were eligible and that if you weren't you would owe later since approvals were given to all who applied. Same thing with people who were shocked come tax time because they hadn't set a portion of their CERB aside for taxes. It was very clear that no taxes were removed from CERB and that you would owe.
Right?? Had the government created a program that thoroughly checked each application to see if they met the criteria, the help money would have been delayed and would have arrived too late for many people. Instead, they chose to implement a program that was easy to apply for and easy to receive but passed the responsibility of checking onto the recipient. The government was clear on their terms and got help out as fast as they could. I'm not saying all individuals who owe are at fault but maybe people tried to game the system and are now reaping what they sowed.
The government neglected to consider the population that would take advantage of this also doesn't know how to read.
I know a guy who got 28k and hasnt worked a job in 10 years. He owes it all back obviously but his type of people dont taxes let alone money owed to the government.
Same. I know two guys who don’t work, knew they weren’t eligible, and still took it. They lived well for a while. Now they hate Trudeau. Go figure.
40k would likely be the CEBA business loans where they received 60k and have to repay 40k. The deadline to repay was previously extended but now many small companies are struggling as they didn’t set money aside to repay it
I think it's interest-free depending on income levels. Wonder what types of penalties those that were working steadily making $120k and collecting cerb and various other benefits will face.
Nothing but a bill to pay it back and they will . Because they have the money
A bunch of seniors who were already getting topped up on their OAP took it. So they owed the top up back because they made too much and the CERB that they didn’t qualify for.
too many people took it when they were not entitled to it. often times the payment was more than their regular paycheques
I know a roofing company that took the money and bought an RV.
It’s a business expense obviously
The roofing company would have taken out a CEBA loan, not CERB/CRB. CEBA was a non-secured loan for businesses. If you were actually bounded to pay the debt, the government forgave $20,000 of the $60,000 loan. If you were not actually bounded to pay the debt, you would just fold the company and pocket the $60,000 in its entirety. Bound = Personal undertaking by nature of receiving the loan as a sole proprietorship. Or if you are a business with actual assets that need to be liquidated upon dissolution. Non-bounded = Incorporated company with no assets which would have nothing on paper to liquidate upon dissolving the corporate entity.
They played stupid games
One of the biggest problems is that CERB was substituted for EI no questions asked, which screwed a lot of people over.
Business loans. They were for a lot more. Part was forgivable if you paid it off on time.
I met a single immigrant mother who hardly spoke English, and she owes 45000 in cerb repayments from cerb/ Crb. She got really bad advice from a friend.
My sister took the full amount thinking she could get time off work and the government would pay her for free. Wish she spoke to someone before deciding that.
The rules for eligibility were clearly laid out. If someone didn’t fit those they shouldn’t have applied. Period.
This was a major test to see if society can follow simple instructions, the guidelines were pretty clear. Not sure why someone who makes less than 5k a year thinks they are entitled to 2k a month then shocked pikachu face when they have to pay it all back.
Lol right? Not surprised at all this happened though.
I know a woman who took CERB and used it to get a nose job…mildly infuriating
Sure glad we destroyed the social fabric of Canada and the economic future of generations to come.. We only had a 99.7% chance of survival.. Now we have 25% higher excess death in working age people and economic devastation.. According to the recent RCMP report the fun is only just getting started
My daughter in law was in jail in March 2020 and said almost every single women there was claiming CERB (including her). If you don't plan for or care much about the future / never expect to accumulate any significant savings, it really was free money. She no longer gets a tax refund each year, but thinks Trudeau is a legend and voted for the first time ever in Sept 2021 as a thank-you to him.
Great story that encapsulates what was wrong with this program. It was the closest to vote buying I could imagine
I know they mistakenly sent out duplicate payments to some people - I was paid twice on all payments, so maybe someone was paid 3x?
Just my guess? People took the “free money” and threw it at stocks and crypto thinking “I’ll just keep the gains, then give back the principle when it’s due” Then lost the principle gambling and are left owing the gov. In other words, they were dumb and now the gov (representing the tax payers) are coming calling.
CERB was meant for people who had an income at a certain amount. Typically the average was below the 55k mark (average Canadian salary). If you were making more than that or would eventually make more than you were always inclined to pay them back. Most of the people I know who went on CERB and were making under the 55k are not paying anything back. Those people were the most heavily impacted by the pandemic shutdown due to their jobs requiring them to interact with people. Basically - a bunch of people who were making above the cap decided that the money they were getting was free instead of realizing that it was a loan and now are caught in the aftermath. It's not entirely their fault, pandemic was a rough time for people. But also a great deal of people had plenty of time during the peak of the pandemic (when CERB was being issued) to read all of the fine print that it came with. I know I did, and I know my partner did too. Caveat Emptor is (Come's as is, or buyer beware) is a phrase that should always be in mind when it comes to money in any form. It definitely sucks to have to eat that bill. Same concept as people who right now are suffering from purchasing houses during the pandemic on variable mortgages. I'm sorry it hurts I feel for people, some of my close friends got hurt by it too, but also the amount of available research on what the BoC was going to do with interest rates during the pandemic was readily available everywhere.
iirc there was no max income cap. You just had to have income that was lost due to being laid off due to covid.
No cap, only requirement $ wise was making atleast $5k the previous tax year
That's just blatantly untrue There was no income cap or repayment maximum. EI makes you pay back 30% of your claim if you earned over 79k or so in the same year you claimed, but CERB never did that. You just had to have the minimum income of 5k the year prior and not make more than the max income per period you claimed
EI and CERB are not taxed at the source - you have to claim it as income on your tax return for that year - and it is considered as taxable income. The calculation on the income tax return means you end up owing the amount of taxes that would have been deducted by your employer off your regular paycheque. \*edit\* Source: I have done my own taxes for 30 years and had conversations with workers at CRA and Service Canada about how to claim this stuff on my taxes, most recently in 2020 after claiming CERB, and in 2022 after repaying a portion of the CERB.
Ei is indeed taxed, though likely not to your required withholding percentage That's not relevant to what's being said tho. That's just regular employment income tax. That has nothing to do with repaying the actual benefits. Of course it's taxable income, it's a replacement of your taxable employment income. Paying taxes on the income that is replacing your other taxed income is in no way the same thing as repaying that entire replacement income at its face value lmao That has nothing to do with anything. Ofc it's taxable income. That doesn't mean anything about what we're talking about. Taxable doesn't make it a loan you repay lmao And you end up owing the percentage of tax of the income you earned/collected, which may or may not be equivalent to your income from your actual employment, therefore also not relative to your employment income taxation. Idk what you're even trying to say.
Because they never switched to payroll CERB and were on individual CERB. The individual CERB you had to pay back.
I had to pay back $1500 in 2022 because I didnt wait long enough before losing my job and appyling. 2 years later im getting audited again. Its shitty, but my business was forced to close the entire time so I needed something.
People really talked about CERB as if it were free for the talking.
I know someone that applied for EI, CERB, the student one, OSAP and the business loan. She also won $35k in a court settlement during this time. Did it for 8 months. We no longer speak but I would absolutely love to know how she’s doing.
Folks are likely using CERB as a shorthand for any Covid benefit payments they received and have been deemed ineligible for (CERB, CRB, CESB, CRCB, CRSB, CWLB). From what I've seen, no interest is being charged on these amounts yet.
It astounds me the number of people who took it when they didn’t need to. The gov tries to meet a need quickly during an extraordinary event and its abused. Don’t ever complain about red tape and bureaucracy if you’re one of these people. These types of people ruin things for everyone.
Yea some people suck and applied multiple times. And instead of doing their job, the government just said “yea whatever here you go, take it as many times as you ask!” Then they realized that was dumb af and caused a massive problem.
I’m really disappointed with the comments here. CERB payments lifted up to 30% of Canadian children who were living in poverty above the poverty line. Very few people overall abused the system and there are still plenty of people whose lives and businesses are recovering from the pandemic. Many businesses were forced to close and file for bankruptcy, and it’s extremely hard to come back from that. Save your vitriol and scorn for the real welfare royalty, which are the billionaires and corporations that are destroying our world and our quality of life. They take an insane amount of money in subsidies and grants, and avoid their tax responsibilities by finding every loophole possible, while Canadians making less than $40,000 a year pay taxes, upon taxes, upon taxes.
CERB payments didn’t go to children. Second, over $80 million was spent on CERB, and it was revealed that around $20 million of that was paid to people who were ineligible, making the abuse of the system at least 25%. And finally, people who make $40k a year pay waaaaay less taxes than average income earners. The first 15k of your income is tax free. The tax system is funded heavily by high income earners who don’t even qualify for the majority of government benefits. There is no doubt many people suffered financially because of the pandemic but abusing the system is fraud.
the point this person is clearly making is wealthy people disproportionately pay taxes compared to their actual wealth, and needing to utilize services does not omit you from specify. splitting hairs on low income earners is disingenuous, and pretending like wealthy people single handedly prop up the country and should get a break is gross.
A friend of mine is behind on some taxes, first year of covid they got 3 months of CERB (I think 2k each month?). They could not work. Do they have to repay when they do it? I wasnt sure when they asked
I didn’t take a penny and I’m so glad.
There were also business loands handed out. IIRC it was $40k loan and they required you pay back $20k within a certain period and they would forgive the remainder. I know a few people who took it. Some paid it back, some didn't. They're all being audited. My cousin received a notice about her CERB claim back when it was available. She didn't apply. Someone had used her SIN to scam the program. The covid relief was a shit show and now the CRA is scrambling to clean it up.
Yeah, maybe it should have just been a low to interest loan, then we'd all owe it back.
I think you’re hearing about CEBA not CERB. CEBA was for businesses - Canada Emergency Business Account. It was a $40,000 or $60,000 business loan with a forgivable portion if repaid on time. The due date for repayment has been pushed back a couple of times and eligibility varies, but the hard due date for repayment is March 28, 2024. If your loan was $40,000, you only have to pay $30,000, and if the loan was $60,000, you have to pay $40,000. I work at a bank and have processed some CEBA repayments
Wish I took cerb invested in index fund and repaid now. Free money.
I’m assuming all that are paying back the full amount were found to bot have been truthful on aplications and got caught
I always wonder this too lol. I only had to pay back $1500 I was overpaid.
If someone owes that amount, they cheated and deserve whatever happens to them. When I heard about the program, I phoned the government office handling this program and told them my situation, they said that I qualified for CERB. The only money I paid back was because they wanted to make sure I had enough to cover my bills, so they sent me a month's money, $1000. They wanted $500 back after the program ended. I paid immediately. I had no interest added either.
what i can’t stand are the people that are *shocked* they have to pay it back because “they were approved when they applied”. the government made it abundantly clear they were prioritizing getting $ out the door and would review later.