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Canadians who don't qualify for CERB are getting it anyway — and could face consequences – CBC.ca

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More than 7 million Canadians have applied for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit — but CBC News has learned that some of them shouldn’t actually be getting the $2,000-per-month payment.

And those receiving the money who aren’t entitled to it could be putting their own financial futures at risk.

One Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) employee said she deals regularly with people who aren’t qualified to receive the benefit but are getting it anyway.

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She said she spoke with a senior collecting a pension who applied for CERB on behalf of herself and her two disabled adult children.

“I noticed all three of them, living in the same household, are getting two $2,000 cheques,” she told CBC News. (The second cheques are retroactive payments.)

“So, $12,000 all on the same day. None of them were eligible.”

CBC News is not disclosing the CRA employee’s identity because she said she fears punishment for speaking publicly about what she’s seen.

‘Laughing in my face’

To qualify for the CERB, an applicant must be a Canadian resident over 15 years of age who has been forced to stop working because of the pandemic. The applicant also must have earned a minimum of $5,000 over the last 12 months and must expect to make less than $1,000 a month while collecting the benefit.

In many cases, people who don’t qualify for CERB are being encouraged or even pressured into applying by family and friends, said the source.

“When I quiz them about it, there’s a variety of answers, from laughing in my face [to] trying to establish that there’s some loophole,” she said.

Few realize that they’ll have to pay taxes on the additional income and could see clawbacks of other benefits, such as tax credits or the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the source said.

Some inmates at a jail in Trois-Rivières, Que., have been sent CERB cheques, according to Radio-Canada. Correctional Service officers intercepted the payments when they arrived at the prison.

The federal government said it is aware of that report and maintains such errors would be caught later by CRA.

Ontario credit counsellor John Cockburn said he’s also seeing people applying for the emergency benefit who are not entitled to it.

“This is kind of just in its infancy right now,” said Cockburn, who works for the Sudbury Community Service Centre.

The risk of clawbacks

He said he fears that as the pandemic crisis continues, and as food and utility bills pile up, more people will apply because they feel a growing sense of urgency.

“I haven’t heard any stories of people getting CERB just for the sake of getting $2,000 to buy a new entertainment system,” he said.

Cockburn said he also worries about people doing themselves financial harm in the long run by accepting CERB payments to which they are not entitled.

He points to one recent case on which he was consulted — a man on a disability benefit who applied for and received CERB even though Cockburn said he shouldn’t have been eligible.

The man’s social services case worker found out and convinced him to return the money. If he hadn’t, the additional income could have affected his access to disability benefits and subsidized housing, Cockburn said.

‘The vast majority of Canadians are honest’

The federal government estimates it will spend $35 billion on the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. No one seems to know how many people may be taking advantage of the system.

One of the federal ministers in charge of the file told CBC News she’d heard anecdotally that some people have applied who should not.

“But I kind of reject that. I really think that the vast majority of Canadians are honest,” said Employment and Workplace Development Minister Carla Qualtrough.

Qualtrough did acknowledge the CERB benefit comes with an elevated risk of fraud.

The CERB application process involves answering just a handful of questions — and everyone who applies for the benefit will receive it, the federal government has said.

Claimants are asked to attest that they are telling the truth in their applications, but it will be up to the CRA to verify claims later and claw back funds as necessary.

‘We took the risk’

The federal government says its programs experience an overall fraud rate of less than one per cent — but Qualtrough acknowledged that making this benefit easier to access increased the risk of fraud.

“If you make something attestation-based, you are increasing the risk of fraud,” she said.

“We knew the risk was there, but it was calculated and we also knew we had to get the money to Canadians. So we took the risk and we’re going to work really hard at the back end to minimize what that’s going to mean for the government purse.”

“There’s just enormous political pressure for politicians to get money out the door,” said Kevin Page, president of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa and a former parliamentary budget officer.

Page said Canada has never seen anything like the scope and cost of the programs introduced in recent weeks to limit the pandemic’s economic damage.

He said that, given the size of the CERB program and the other relief packages, even a fraud rate of one per cent could cost the federal government billions of dollars.

‘There’s so much at stake’

“These numbers on fraud, they are going to be large, and public servants know … there’s so much at stake with respect to trust of these institutions like CRA or Service Canada. They have to go after and check these things,” Page said.

Qualtrough said there are various measures in place to guard against abuse of the system. Federal staff are using social insurance numbers to check for overpayments and cross-checking between programs to ensure people aren’t being paid through more than one program.

“There’s also just ways we can tell, based on people’s T-4s when we do the taxes next year, that if you are getting income during a time for which you’re also claiming you had no income, or you had less than $1,000 [in income], we can figure that all out,” Qualtrough said.

People walk past the boarded up windows of a pub in Ottawa’s Byward Market that remains closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic April 10, 2020. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

National president of the Union of Taxation Employees Marc Brière said the CRA will follow up with people who don’t qualify for the benefit but receive it anyway, even if they claimed it in error.

“There’s a question of trust in this case … we want the money to be processed rapidly to go into people’s hands and [the application] is simplified, to say the least,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean there are not people at work doing verification as we speak and it will continue as time goes by.”

Qualtrough expressed sympathy for those low-income Canadians who could wind up making their own financial situations worse by claiming the CERB while unqualified.

“I absolutely share the concern for people who are in that dire a predicament that they [would] be prepared to take that kind of personal risk,” she said.

She argued her government has taken steps to help those Canadians, such as boosting the GST credit and the Canada Child Benefit.

She said she continues to believe the design of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit program followed the best approach.

“I also just am very confident in the honesty of Canadians,” she said.

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Pakistan airline crew sought asylum in Canada: spokesperson – CTV News

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Typically, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight attendants who arrive in Toronto stay at a hotel overnight, meet back up with their crew the next day and then fly to their next destination.

But increasingly often, PIA attendants aren’t showing up, the airline says. According to PIA, at least eight flight attendants disappeared over the last year and a half.

They have abandoned their jobs and are believed to have sought asylum in Canada, a spokesperson for the government-owned airline says.

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Increased occurrences

Abdullah Hafeez Khan said at least eight flight attendants “have gone missing” after flying to Pearson International Airport in Toronto. He said these incidents have been happening over the last 10 years, but are now occurring more frequently.

“Since probably October of 2022, the number of the people that have opted asylum has increased tremendously,” Khan said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca from Karachi, Pakistan, where the airline is based.

“None of those crew members that disappeared in the last one-and-a-half years have come back. So they were granted asylum for one way or the other, and that probably has encouraged others to do so.”

The missing employees were fired immediately and lost their company benefits, Khan said.

Why did they flee?

Khan said he could only speculate as to why the flight attendants would flee.

The Canadian government underscored the volatile situation in Pakistan, warning in a travel advisory of a “high threat of terrorism,” along with threats of civil unrest, sectarian violence and kidnapping.

“The security situation is fragile and unpredictable,” the Canadian travel advisory reads. “Incidents are typically attributed to extremism, ethnic divisions, sectarian strife, regional political disputes and the situation in neighbouring Afghanistan.”

It added that many deaths and injuries have occurred from bombings, shootings and other terrorist attacks at a wide range of targets.

Since Khan isn’t in contact with any of the missing employees, he says, he assumes they decided to seek asylum in Canada for economic and social reasons.

“So I naturally assumed that all of them have been given asylum because I don’t think they would be living there illegally,” he said, adding they may already have family connections in Canada who can support them.

In this June 8, 2013, photo, a Pakistan International Airlines plane moments before take off from the Benazir Bhutto airport in Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

‘PR crisis’

Khan called the flight attendants’ disappearances a “PR crisis” for PIA that is “bad” for business amid a crew shortage.

The airline is in talks with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Pakistani law enforcement agencies to potentially create a “legal safeguard” to curtail flight crew from seeking asylum, he said.

When asked about the PIA flight attendants’ disappearances, Erin Kerbel, spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, said the department couldn’t comment on specific cases due to privacy legislation.

In response to questions about PIA’s claim that discussions are underway about the issue, a spokesperson for the CBSA said it could not confirm any information.

“The Canada Border Services Agency does not provide comment or details on specific individuals, including any discussions that would take place with airline companies, as an individual’s border and immigration information is considered private and protected by the Privacy Act,” Maria Ladouceur said in an email to CTVNews.ca.

Since the crew members’ disappearances, Khan said, the airline has “done numerous things to curtail that.”

For instance, the airline is only staffing Toronto-bound flights with crew members who have “established linkages” in Pakistan, such as children, spouses or parents, as well as those who have worked in the organization for more than 15 years.

The airline avoids sending to Toronto those who are single or don’t have established family ties in Pakistan, he said.

Khan said he and the airline are no longer in contact with the flight attendants because, they discovered, they usually change their phone numbers soon after disappearing in Toronto.

Who disappeared?

The PIA flight attendants who vanished in Canada are seasoned pros in their late 30s or 40s, some of whom have worked for the airline for as long as two decades, Khan said.

“There was never any sign from them that they would seek something like that,” he said. “So that is something that is bothering us in the matter because working with people who have been working with you for a long time and then something happens like this is pretty unexpected.”

In one of the latest cases in February, the crew members were waiting to take the bus back to the airport from the hotel in Toronto and one of the flight attendants didn’t show up, Khan said.

The airline was unable to reach the flight attendant on her cellphone or hotel landline so, Khan says, they asked hotel management to check if she was OK.

“When the crew went there, she left her uniform there with a note saying, ‘Thank you PIA,'” Khan said, which he interpreted as a genuine sentiment of gratitude for her more than 15 years of service with PIA rather than a taunt.

Khan said the crew members who disappeared were “family values people” who had good careers in Pakistan.

Asylum policies

Individuals can make a refugee claim in Canada at a port of entry upon arrival or online if they are already in Canada, according to the Canadian government’s website.

Canadian immigration or border officials will determine if the person is eligible for a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board. All claimants must undergo health and security screenings, the government says.

If eligible to make a claim in Canada, refugee claimants can access social assistance, education, health services, emergency housing and legal aid pending a decision on their claim. Most can apply for a work permit after a medical examination.

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Alberta's population surges by record-setting 202,000 people: Here's where they all came from – CBC.ca

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Alberta smashed population-growth records in the past year, mainly due to people moving to the province from across Canada and around the world.

The province’s population surged to just over 4.8 million as of Jan. 1, according to new estimates released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.

That’s an increase of 202,324 residents compared with a year earlier, which marks — by far — the largest annual increase on record.

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Alberta also broke a national record in 2023 for interprovincial migration, with a net gain of 55,107 people.

“This was the largest gain in interprovincial migration nationally since comparable data became available in 1972,” Statistics Canada said in a release.


Most of the interprovincial migrants came from Ontario and British Columbia.

Statistics Canada estimates that 38,236 Ontarians moved to Alberta last year, versus 14,860 Albertans who moved to Ontario, for a net gain of 23,376 people.

Similarly, an estimated 37,650 British Columbians moved to Alberta, compared to 22,400 Albertans who moved to B.C., for a net gain of 15,250.


All told, interprovincial migration accounted for 27 per cent of Alberta’s population growth over the past year.

That put it just ahead of permanent immigration, which accounted for 26 per cent, and well ahead of natural population increase (more births than deaths), which accounted for eight per cent.

The largest component, however, was temporary international migration.

Non-permanent residents from other countries accounted for 39 per cent of the province’s population growth in the past year, reflecting a national trend.


Canada’s population reached 40,769,890 on Jan. 1, according to Statistics Canada estimates, which is up 3.2 per cent from a year ago.

“Most of Canada’s 3.2-per-cent population growth rate stemmed from temporary immigration in 2023,” Statistics Canada noted.

“Without temporary immigration, that is, relying solely on permanent immigration and natural increase (births minus deaths), Canada’s population growth would have been almost three times less (1.2 per cent).”

Alberta’s population, meanwhile, grew by 4.4 per cent year-over-year.

Alberta now represents 11.8 per cent of the country’s population, its largest proportion on record. 

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Why Canada's record population growth is helping – and hurting – the economy – CTV News

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Canada has recorded the fastest population growth in 66 years, increasing by 1.3 million people, or 3.2 per cent, in 2023, according to a new report from Statistics Canada.

The country has not seen such growth since 1957, when the spike was attributed to the baby boom and an influx of immigrants fleeing Hungary.

The vast majority of Canada’s growth last year was due to immigration, with temporary residents — which includes foreign workers and international students — making up the largest proportion of newcomers.

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“We need people coming to Canada to help with our economy,” says Matti Siemiatycki, a professor of planning at the University of Toronto. “There are many jobs and professions where there are vacancies, and that is having an impact, whether in the healthcare sector or trades and construction sector.”

Siemiatycki adds immigrants also bring “ingenuity… resources… and culture” to Canada.

Newcomers are relied on to help keep pace with Canada’s aging population and declining fertility rates, but the influx also presents a challenge for a country struggling to build the homes and infrastructure needed for immigrants.

“It’s an incredibly large shock for the economic system to absorb because of just the sheer number of people coming into the country in a short period of time,” says Robert Kavcic. a senior economist and director with BMO Capital Markets.

“The reality is population can grow extremely fast, but the supply side of the economy like housing and service infrastructure, think health care and schools, can only catch up at a really gradual pace,” Kavcic says. “So there is a mismatch right now.”

The impact of that mismatch can most acutely be seen in the cost of rent, services and housing.

In December, Kavcic wrote in a note that Canada needs to build 170,000 new housing units every three months to keep up with population growth, noting the industry is struggling to complete 220,000 units in a full year.

To address this, Ottawa has announced plans to cap the number of new temporary residents while also reducing the number of international student visas, a move economists say could offer some relief when it comes to housing and the cost of living.

“The arithmetic on the caps actual works relatively well because it would take us back down to 1 per cent population growth which we have been used to over the last decade and which is more or less absorbable by the economy,” Kavcic says. “The question is whether or not we see policy makers follow through and hit those numbers.”

Economists believe these changes could help ease inflationary pressures and may make a Bank of Canada rate cut more likely, but could also lead to slower GDP growth.

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