BC seeks repayment from workers denied $1,000 aid due to EI technicality, report finds unfairness
A procedural gap in British Columbia’s pandemic relief legislation has led to some residents being asked to repay provincial benefits, despite having lost their jobs because of COVID-19.
This finding was detailed in a new report from the BC Ombudsperson, as reported by The Globe and Mail.
The BC Emergency Benefit for Workers was a one-time $1,000 payment issued to individuals who qualified for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), Ottawa’s primary pandemic-related income support.
The benefit also applied to those who lost employment due to COVID-19 prior to CERB’s rollout.
However, the report found that a group of people was excluded from receiving the benefit due to a bureaucratic irregularity.
These were individuals who had previously received Employment Insurance (EI) for unrelated reasons and returned to work before the pandemic began.
When they later lost their jobs due to COVID-19 and applied for CERB, their earlier EI claims were reactivated instead of being moved to the pandemic-specific support.
As a result, they received regular EI payments even though CERB was already in place, rendering them ineligible for the provincial $1,000 payment under existing rules.
The ombudsperson’s report labelled this exclusion “unfair,” and described it as “arbitrary and inconsistent” with the original intent of the emergency benefit.
Despite the findings, the Ministry of Finance has not acted on the ombudsperson’s recommendation to amend the Income Tax Act to retroactively include those affected.
“I was quite disappointed that the ministry didn’t provide a principled, practical rationale for why they were refusing our recommendation to amend the Income Tax Act,” said BC Ombudsperson Jay Chalke.
Chalke noted that his office launched the investigation after receiving complaints from individuals who had followed government instructions when applying for the benefit but were later told to repay it.
The Ministry of Finance has not disclosed how many individuals are impacted or the total amount being reclaimed.
Buzz Lanthier-Rogers, speaking on behalf of the ministry, stated that both the administration and the auditing of the benefit were conducted according to the legislation passed at the time.
He also noted that the ministry does not track how many individuals had previous EI claims reinstated due to the pandemic.
According to the ombudsperson’s report, the exclusion contravenes the Ombudsperson Act by being arbitrary and unnecessary for fulfilling the law’s intent.
It may also have had disproportionate effects on Indigenous people, who, according to Statistics Canada data, were more likely to have recent EI claims.
Other groups potentially affected include individuals who had EI claims reactivated following maternity, parental or sickness leave, suggesting adverse impacts based on sex, parental status, or disability.
Chalke described the problem as an “understandable policy flaw” stemming from the urgency of early pandemic legislation.
The province did not initially realise that the federal government was redirecting eligible CERB applicants to regular EI claims if they still had unused benefits
But, he wrote, “what’s not understandable, and what this report addresses, is the refusal to fix an unfairness that came to light in the ensuing years.”
The BC government has previously revised eligibility rules for the benefit.
In 2021, it amended the legislation to include workers who had applied for the EI-based version of CERB, known as EI-ERB, after originally limiting eligibility to those who had applied for the self-employed stream.
Chalke argues the law should be amended again to account for those now excluded due to the EI reactivation issue.
