The husband of Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner must return payments received from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) program, records show.
In a filing with the Ethics Commissioner, Ms. Hepfner, the MP for Hamilton Mountain, Ont., disclosed her husband Michael Aitkens, a local CBC cameraman, has been asked to repay benefits, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter. The amount he must repay has not been released.
During the pandemic, CBC implemented a policy where most of its employees were working from home with full pay. Notably, less than 20 percent of CBC employees, mainly those in essential operations such as news presentation and news gathering, were required to work from the office.
“These were really complicated programs the government was rolling out,” Ms. Hepfner said to the Commons ethics committee Feb. 10, 2023, as first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.
“The government was rolling out these programs to help Canadians.”
The CERB program, established by Parliament in 2020, was designed to assist unemployed tax filers facing potential eviction or foreclosure by providing monthly payments of $2,000. The program came into existence as a response to the economic fallout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was later revealed that more than 1.1 million Canadians, who claimed the benefit improperly, have been ordered to repay a total of $2.1 billion.
So far, the CRA has expended $387.6 million in staff efforts and resources to address erroneous distributions from the CERB program, according to records presented in the House of Commons.
The case of Ms. Hepfner’s husband highlights issues surrounding the CERB program, particularly concerning individuals who claimed the benefit despite having other income sources. According to Ms. Hepfner’s ethics disclosure summary, the couple owns rental property in Hamilton and St. Catharines, Ont.
Ms. Hepfner, who currently serves as the parliamentary secretary for gender equality, was a television reporter for CHCH-TV in Hamilton at the start of the pandemic. She has previously spoken about the complexity of government programs rolled out during the pandemic, emphasizing the emergency nature of the situation.
“I was on the other side,” said Ms. Hepfner. “I was a journalist. I was mostly tasked with covering those daily news conferences. I have to say from my perspective the information was clear. There was a lot of information. These were really complicated programs the government was rolling out.”
At hearings of the Commons public accounts committee in 2021, federal managers acknowledged that the rapid processing of pandemic relief claims inevitably led to overpayments. Graham Flack, then-deputy minister of employment, testified that this was a known risk associated with the expedited implementation of the CERB program.
