this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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It would have been so much simpler and cheaper to just make CERB apply universally instead of still chasing after people who "cheated" the rules three years after the fact.
I know a lot of people who thought they were eligible and learned come tax season that they weren't. The communications surrounding CERB were messy and unclear, with eligibility criteria seemingly changing daily.
Yep, golden opportunity to have implemented a UBI, but people would have complained about that just as much!
Eh, UBI is a whole other thing.
It's essentially a subsidy to Walmart, Uber, McDonald's, etc, when you consider that we have the option of increasing minimum wage instead.
If the money it took to run UBI was instead used to make sure that "universal" services were actually universal and available, we'd actually have something to show for it other than yet more corporate profits.
I'm so glad to see someone else say this. UBI gets trotted out as a solution to too many problems that a decent minimum wage would solve.
Yeah and it's pushed by guys like Andrew Yang, who very obviously isn't pushing it to help people. He just wants to pay employees less and have the government top it up because it's not a good look for businesses to have their employees needing to go to food banks.
Just raise minimum wage and ignore these business people wanting government subsidies.
I would add: raise minimum wage and increase marginal tax rates, both on individuals and corporations. Fix capital gains while you're at it.
Incentivize the rich to invest in their businesses and the people that run them, instead of their stock portfolios and a Mercedes for their mistresses. You'd help solve Canada's productivity problems at the same time because we'd actually be doing useful work with our money, instead of house-trading.
What you're describing is basically how things were before Jack Welch came along and popularized excessive layoffs to please shareholders. Companies actually did take a lot of pride in having a lot of employees that had good working conditions before that asshole screwed everything up.
And yeah we have to tax the wealthy for sure. The stock market is bloated and it's unhealthy.
I call the mentality among billionaires "foolish greed". If they were taxed and money filtered its way to regular people through social programs, that would increase demand. Demand for the products their businesses sell. So they'd wind up getting that money back. Only difference is regular people would have a better quality of life while businesses competed to sell products that contribute to that better quality of life.
Fucking Jack Welch and Reagan's supply side economics. Everything was going great before those assholes. Well except for problems with oil prices causing economic instability, along with oil causing some much bigger problems we weren't aware of at the time. But now I'm getting off-topic.
The criteria was clearly defined on the website at the time. I remember looking it up, and I didn't qualify, so I didn't apply.
How did people apply without seeing the criteria written out on the page they were applying on? I guess some people were thinking "free money!" and didn't bother to read the page.
The goal was to make sure people got the money they needed and they didn't have the resources to look over the applications closely. Justin Trudeau clearly said something to the effect of "Yes it's possible to get the CERB if you don't actually qualify, but don't that."
It was very clear to me at the time that a) I didn't qualify b) I could apply anyway and get the money even though I didn't qualify c) They would be checking later and I'd have to pay it back if I didn't qualify
I think people got thinking about part b) and didn't understand part c) would happen someday.
I applied for EI as I qualified for that, they gave me CERB instead.
Did they end up clawing it back?
I was confused that I got a CERB clawback warning, and had it clawed back, but then I realized that I applied for sickness EI for something unrelated during covid. It isn’t worth it for me to try and track it back, especially when blinking the wrong direction is liable to get me locked out of my Service Canada account for some reason.
I just can’t even get angry about the ineptitude anymore, or even disappointed. Disappointment implies that I expected better, which throughout my apprenticeship of dealing with them I learned never to do.
They are saying they over paid me $1000 and are trying to be scary in attempting to retrieve it. Just making it difficult for them, as it wasn't my fuck up.
Yeah, I remember helping people look up the rules. JT was very clear, as was everyone else involved in the program. The point was helping people who needed it now^1. There was no verification at the time. They would go through and identify those who didn't qualify later, when the emergency had passed.
I have little sympathy for people who were fully employed at the time, applied, and then play dumb. Sure, if you were on some modified work schedule or work sharing thing... it was a weird time. People could have been confused. It was always 100% clear from the start that it was meant from those who were being furloughed, laid off, put on unpaid leave, etc.
^1 Well not now now, but then now.
I have no idea what it said on the website because, at the time, I had no internet at home, the library was closed and there are no public access points anywhere around. So I did what I always do, make application over the phone. That was a disaster zone of incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent, and occasionally incoherent instructions and alternate phone numbers.
Based on the fact that nobody has come chasing me for money, I'm guessing that I must have legitimately qualified.
Most people lack basic research skills in the best of times, and the start of the COVID pandemic was not the best of times. A lot of people were in situations where receiving CERB would have made sense, as in they definitely needed it, yet they were not technically eligible. I can't really blame someone who's stressed out, socially isolated, and out of a job seeing a program to help people through the pandemic and automatically applying, thinking "This must apply to me!"
I think people that were working for the CRA probably should've known they weren't eligible. They had a job at the time. And part of that job was to know about this kind of thing. Either they've been fired for trying to rip off the government or they were fired for being incompetent at their jobs. Either way, it's correct they were fired.
For others that made a mistake, they gotta pay the money back. So in the end they got a loan from the government. I don't that as a bad thing either.
Not all government employees are full time indeterminates and not all CRA employees work in money related jobs. Heck, CERB wasn't handled by them alone, service Canada also made payments! If their contract expired or was ended early then what? When CERB was introduced communication wasn't clear at all and even some employers thought people should apply for that instead of EI.
How could the be fired now if their contract expired in 2020?
Why were employers telling their former employees to not apply for EI? Why were people who lost their jobs listening to what their former employer telling them to do?
"We need to let you go but from what we understand you need to apply for CERB instead of EI"
As for the first question, term employees are usually rehired again and again with breaks between contracts so they don't reach their 3 years of continuous employment making them indeterminate by default. My bet is that many just went on CERB instead of EI and now they're in trouble because of that.
One of the biggest problems with CERB was that you didn't have to apply for it specifically.
I happened to be out of work for a short time and applied for regular EI. They automatically gave me CERB then fucked me over with a surprise $2k bill a year later.
I just finished paying that off 2 months ago.
Same for me, I think I had a short sickness EI claim automatically converted them clawed back, but because of the time gap involved I just couldn’t figure it out until now and figured that some money must have got dropped in my account without me noticing.
Happened to my brother who had his hours slashed to almost nothing. He applied and received the money, but was then told even though his pay was reduced significantly he still made too much to qualify (over $1,000 per month). I don't believe the per month limit was in place when he originally applied.
I know people who weren't sure, called the CRA, got told they were eligible, then still get chased because the employee they spoke to was full of shit.
A weird mix of bureaucracy and idiocracy.
Sure, give CERB to millions of people who don't need it. Brilliant idea. That program was rolled out as fast as humanly possible and people expect perfection....
What are your arguments against doing so?
The cost would have been a lot higher. Either you have to reduce the dollar value for each recipient to keep the total amount the same, or, more likely, keep the dollar value the same for each recipient, "create" more money overall, and spike inflation significantly worse than it already has been.
You can't just put so much money into circulation like that at once. The amount we already put in for covid relief is a big contributor to the inflation we have seen over the past few years. It devalues savings like mad, hurting tons of middle and retirement age people who have to live off of those savings for the rest of their lives.
For anyone curious, 6.5m out of the 38m total population claimed it. So it would cost close to 6x as much if given to everyone (if even children included).
I support the concept of basic income in general, but this was a different situation specific to COVID job loss.
They will garnish your wages and you'll have to pay it back plus interest.
Just how she goes.
I'd suggest cutting a deal with them. You should be able to set up a payment plan and it'll probably less cost overall than if they have to resort to garnishing your wages. They can be reasonable if you talk to them, but they're significantly less reasonable if they have to come after you.
But it's up to you.
I have a hard time seeing how doubling or tripling CERB eligibility would be cheaper. Are you saying that administering the program cost more than the benefits delivered?