The total amount of employment insurance fraud has hit a five-year high — a sign for federal officials that efforts to root out wrongful payments are working.
Public accounts documents released this month list more than 104,000 incidents of fraudulent EI claims totalling almost $177 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year.
It marks the fourth year that figures have increased in the wake of efforts by Employment and Social Development Canada to fine tune its fraud-sleuthing tools to improve its ability to find and deal with fraud.
Officials expect to eventually collect $132.8 million of the wrongful payments identified in the fiscal year that ended in March, and plan to write off about $74,000.
The amount of fraud is minuscule compared to the overall amount spent on benefits to unemployed workers, to new parents on leave, workers who need time off due to serious illness, or those who must stay off the job to care for an ailing family member.
EI spending between April 2017 and March 2018 topped $19.7 billion, meaning the value of fraudulent claims was less than one per cent of total spending.
"The government is committed to deliver these important benefits to Canadians when they need it most while protecting the integrity of the system from fraud and erroneous over payment," an ESDC spokesman said in an statement.
"The department has made investments to improve its efforts to identify fraud, including adjustments to its risk-based analytical models. These efforts have contributed to this increase."
Generally, the government finds it more difficult to recoup funds the later it detects fraud or overpayments.
The government must collect the money within six years of identifying the wrongful payment, or officials write it off. The clock starts when an incident is flagged, but the deadline to collect can be extended if, for instance, the debtor goes to court.
A review of the annual spending documents show EI write offs have been on a three year slide, hitting $43.6 million in fiscal year 2017-2018.
Two years ago, ESDC rejigged the automated system that detects fraud in hopes of identifying more and larger cases of incorrect payments.
The program considers some 100 variables to calculate the chance someone has received too much money, either by accident or through fraud.
Similar efforts have hit other programs, including old age security benefits that cost $38.4 billion last fiscal year.
Old age security fraud dropped between the 2017-18 fiscal year and the preceding 12-month period, going from 16 cases worth $1.2 million down to 10 incidents worth $494,490 — a six-year low for both figures.
Likewise, Canada Pension Plan fraud has been on a downward trend, now into its fifth year.
Officials found five cases, worth $92,010, but half is not expected to be recovered.
Comments
So, just wondering, how much do they spend on the detecting fraud part, and how much bureaucratic overhead does this create for all the non-fraudulent claimants? 'Cause if they're spending 5% to catch 0.5% that might not be the most effective use of money. Especially from the perspective of the 99.5% they're treating like criminals so they can catch the remainder.
I wonder how much money we could get back if we put that much energy into sleuthing tax evasion by the rich? Because we know with them it isn't any measly 0.5%.
Another question: How much of the fraud is the result of making it incredibly difficult to qualify? When I was young the general impression I got was that if you'd had a job, and lost it, you could get unemployment insurance (we called it UI back then, before they made the term all cheery). It was maybe abused a bit by places that relied on seasonal industries like fishing, but frankly if we hadn't done that we just would have had to pay more for fish because the fishers would have needed enough money to live until next season.
Now my understanding is that if you had a job, and lost it, you've got maybe a 30% chance, which is obscene considering it's INSURANCE--we pay in, we should get to take out when we're up against it. And there's a massive increase in minimal temp jobs, which leave you more precarious and more likely to need EI, but don't qualify you for it. So if someone who really should have qualified for EI and is desperate manages to get their hands on some payments the government redefined out from under them, not sure if I care.
Not that there aren't real scammers, I'm sure there are, and some of them are just useless leeches and I'm happy if they get caught. I'm just saying I want to know if the sledgehammer might be more usefully applied against the great wall of wealthy fraud rather than the gnat of a few lower class scammers.