CRA fires 20 employees, investigating hundreds for taking CERB payments

The Canada Revenue Agency has fired multiple employees and is investigating hundreds of other after internal investigations revealed that they had taken Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) payments while employed.

As of June 30, the CRA confirmed that 20 employees are no longer with the CRA after internal reviews, and that the number could rise after reviews are completed.

“The CRA has since launched a broader internal review process to identify any CRA employees who inappropriately received the CERB while employed with the CRA. We are currently investigating a very limited number of our employees, representing approximately 600 employees, or less than 1% of the CRA’s total workforce,” said Sylvie Branch, media relations for the CRA, in a statement.

“Being a current employee of the CRA does not necessarily mean an individual was ineligible for the CERB. An internal review process to investigate each case is warranted as the CRA employs individuals with a variety of employment profiles such as temporary and student contracts; and, as such, individuals may have been eligible to receive the CERB at the time it was available.”

The reviews from the CRA are said to be looked at on a case-by-case basis as the CRA did not explicitly say those, with the “most egregious cases” of misconduct resulting in termination of employment as the most severe measure, but not all disciplinary actions are the same for each employee. Employees could also lose their “reliability status”, which is a condition of employment at the CRA.

The agency stated that employees with temporary or student contracts would have been eligible to receive the benefit and would not be penalized.

Over 60,000 people are employed by the CRA, and the agency stresses that the situation “in no way undermines the honesty and integrity” of other employees.

During the pandemic, applicants who lost their primary job or source of income could qualify for CERB, a $2,000 a month payment. Even if applicants were still employed, their monthly income would have to be below $1,000 at the time of application to be eligible.

The CERB program ended in September 2020, and as of January the agency had warned nearly one million Canadians that they needed to repay back some or all of their COVID-19 benefits, for a total of $4.2 billion as of that date.