When it comes to wasteful spending and lackadaisical accounting, the Liberal Government of Mark Carney and former PM, Justin Trudeau take the cake. Trouble is, they want to have their cake, give it away, demand it back and eat it too! In December, the story broke that the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) is frantically trying to get back about $10 billion that was doled out to ineligible recipients during Covid. Turns out, it is not only more blessed to give than to receive, it’s also a lot easier.

Most of the $84 billion given out in Covid-19 benefits—whether to worthy recipients or scammers—is already spent. Most Canadians do not have thousands of dollars stored up for the rainy-day taxman. Many of those who legitimately applied for benefits during Covid actually needed the money to cover their bills. Those who fraudulently applied for the handouts probably never expected to have to pay it back. They most likely assumed that a government as incompetent and inefficient (and crooked) as the scandal-prone government of Justin Trudeau would never notice that they had been hoodwinked. Well, it appears that—in some cases at least—the chickens came home to roost, and the CRA is now demanding that the money carelessly thrown around by the PM’s friends and ending up in the wrong pockets be returned.

And so it should. Fraud should never be rewarded. People who read and understood the eligibility requirements, who discovered that they didn’t qualify but still applied in the hopes that government agents might not notice, are guilty of fraud and should repay the money. But more importantly, the government itself should take responsibility for its own poor management, not only for precious taxpayer dollars but also for the borrowed, inflated dollars that future taxpayers will have to cough up.

The $84 billion that was given out directly to Canadians through a variety of funds that were set up to allegedly “alleviate poverty and suffering” was also a convenient way to distract Canadians from the disastrous impacts on the Canadian economy of the foolish and coercive actions of governments—both federal and provincial—in response to Covid. The reasons citizens were hurting, businesses were closed and governments were dysfunctional were because of the unscientific and ridiculous enforcing of social distancing and mask mandates, restrictions on crowd size, quarantining of healthy people and silly arrows being placed in grocery store aisles. Some businesses were ordered closed, others closed because they could not break even under the heavy-handed crackdowns.

Funds were handed out under the following programs:

• Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)
• Canada Recovery Benefit (meant to help those ineligible for EI)
• Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit (CRCB)
• Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit
• Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit
• Canada Emergency Student Benefit

It’s known that, among other types of fraudulent applications, some of the money went to 221,320 people already receiving EI benefits.

During this ongoing review and attempted retrieval of wrongly distributed funds, it was discovered that even some government workers had their hand in the cookie jar. The CRA itself has fired 330 of its own employees for their “inappropriate” CERB applications. These are the people we are supposed to trust with our tax returns and tax dollars!

And of course, Members of Parliament received full pay during this shameful period of coercive lockdowns and inflation-causing wasteful deficit spending! In fact, they gave themselves a healthy raise every year during Covid. Base pay for a backbench MP is now $209, 800. On April Fool’s Day it will go up again. The Prime Minister is currently receiving $419,600 directly from taxpayers. Who knows how much his Brookfield assets are growing?

It would be nice if the CRA would begin clawing back from those who created this mess in the first place. While Canada’s debt has skyrocketed, those who abused their power have raked in a fortune. Canada’s federal debt today sits at $1.286 trillion and our government is adding about $109 million to that debt every day. Our interest payments on that debt are costing us $150.5 million every single day.

CHP Canada promotes a policy of mandatory balanced budgets. Government should STOP using the taxpayer credit card and begin paying down the debt. If you agree, join us: www.chp.ca