CRA SAYS NOT COST EFFECTIVE TO RECOVER $BILLIONS

 There’s a theory out there that demanding modest sums from moderate-income Canadians is a standard CRA practice, in the hope that a big percentage will just pay up rather than fight about it, even if they feel the claim is unjust. That sounds a bit Machiavellian to me, though you don’t have to belong to QAnon to harbour some doubts.
   This would hardly be worth mentioning if not for the report from Auditor General Karen Hogan indicating the government paid as much as $32 billion in pandemic benefits to people who were ineligible. It’s no secret that the federal Liberals were firing off money in all directions in an effort to protect people and the economy from going under, and with little time or opportunity to sort out the fine details. The idea was to get the money out there, and deal with the rest later. Except the CRA has indicated it now has little if any interest in exploring those details, even if there are tens of billions at stake, contending it “would not be cost effective nor in keeping with international and industry best practices to pursue 100 per cent of all potentially ineligible claims.”