Victoria – BC Ombudsperson Jay Chalke has released a new report finding that the provincial government unjustly required some workers to repay the $1,000 BC Emergency Benefit for Workers (BCEBW) – and later refused to correct the unfairness, despite previously fixing another nearly identical problem.
The BCEBW was introduced by the province in 2020 to support people who lost their job due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, to qualify, recipients had to be receiving the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), a pandemic-specific federal benefit. To move quickly, the province used eligibility for CERB as a proxy for determining who should get the BCEBW, but it was unaware that some people who had lost their job due to COVID-19 were being routed by the federal government to two other federal benefits.
As a result, eligibility for the BCEBW did not include some people who had older, unrelated federal Employment Insurance (EI) claims – even if they had returned to work and then lost their jobs due to COVID-19, just like everyone else.
Some of those workers were placed on regular EI through no fault of their own. These individuals had taken parental or medical leave, or experienced short-term layoffs within the past year, and still had unused EI benefits. When they later lost their jobs due to COVID-19 and applied for help, those old EI claims were automatically reactivated by the federal government – something the public including those applying for CERB had no control over—making them ineligible for the BCEBW. Because the province was unaware of this technicality, they paid the BCEBW to those applicants.
“People applied for the provincial benefit in good faith, received it, and used it to get through a crisis,” said Ombudsperson Jay Chalke. “Now, years later, they are being told that they never should have qualified for the provincial benefit and need to repay the $1,000. Not because they didn’t lose their jobs due to COVID-19 – they did – but because of how a different federal benefit claim was processed behind the scenes. It was unjust for the province to require repayment in such circumstances.”
The Ombudsperson notes that the province had already demonstrated its ability to address similar issues. Although people who received EI-ERB are considered eligible today, that was not initially the case. In 2021, the government amended the BCEBW to include people receiving EI-ERB once it became clear that those workers were being excluded. But now, the government is refusing to do the same for people placed on regular EI due to reactivated claims.
“What’s puzzling and indeed inexplicable is that the province already showed it could fix this kind of unfairness,” said Chalke. “In 2021, it changed the rules to help one group of excluded workers by introducing amendments to the provincial Income Tax Act. But when the same problem appeared again affecting a different group it is refusing to act.”
The report also found three other serious flaws in how the Ministry of Finance audited BCEBW payments in the years that followed:
- Some eligible workers were told to repay the benefit even though they met the criteria.
- Repayment letters from the ministry were confusing, with no clear explanation of why recipients were being asked to repay the benefit or how they could show they qualified.
- The ministry did not use available federal data to verify eligibility and instead placed the burden entirely on individuals leading some to repay the benefit even though they were eligible to receive it.
After the Ombudsperson raised these three issues, the ministry took appropriate steps to correct the audit process. It reviewed affected files, cancelled repayment requests or refunded people who had already wrongly had to repay, and supported legislative changes to extend the reconsideration period.
“The ministry deserves credit for how it responded to the audit issues we identified in our investigation,” said Chalke. “Thousands of British Columbians benefited from government’s response to the issues we raised about the audit. But it’s hard to understand why that same willingness to fix things hasn’t extended to the reactivated EI exclusion issue.”
The Ombudsperson made only one recommendation in today’s report – that the Ministry of Finance introduce amendments to the Income Tax Act to extend BCEBW eligibility to workers who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 but were excluded only because of reactivated EI claims. The ministry declined and, despite being given the opportunity, did not provide any explanation or engage with the substance of the recommendation.
“This report isn’t about trying to undo a program that was created in a hurry,” said Chalke. “It’s about what governments do when they later find out that parts of those programs were flawed. When unfairness becomes clear, the public expects action or at the very least, an explanation. At this point, the Ministry of Finance has done neither – it hasn’t fixed the problem, and it hasn’t said why. Since they fixed a nearly identical problem in 2021, one can only assume that the ministry has simply decided that enough time has passed that nobody will care if they don’t fix a pandemic-era problem. I disagree. Fairness doesn’t have a best before date.”