The federal government is promising to further help Canadians who have been affected financially by COVID-19 and crackdown on those who are taking advantage of the system.
During his daily address on Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau highlighted some of the measures already taken by the federal government over the last three months including the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and Emergency Wage Subsidy Program.
According to Trudeau, work is continuing behind the scenes to bring further relief to Canadians.
"On Saturday, we shared draft legislation with the opposition parties which included additional proposals to help people," he explained. "This legislation will aim to provide direct support to people with disabilities, support more workers through the wage subsidy, and ensure that Canadians who aren't able to meet certain judicial timelines such as bankruptcy aren't unfairly punished."
Trudeau added that his government is also working towards making CERB payments more flexible.
"Discussions are ongoing but I fully expect us to work well with the opposition to deliver this important support to Canadians," said Trudeau.
Trudeau also vowed that any individual caught taking advantage of CERB will face consequences including possible fines and jail time. However, he stressed that the federal government is specifically eyeing the "criminals" who deliberately made false claims.
"We also knew from the beginning that there would be mistakes and indeed that there would be a small number of fraudsters who tried to take advantage of it," he said. "There may be a number of people who mistakenly took both the CERB and the wage subsidy because they weren't sure what they were going to do... those people will simply have to pay back the one that they shouldn't have been taking. We're not looking to punish people who made honest mistakes."
The prime minister said he believes the vast majority of CERB recipients are of good faith. He also defended his government's decision to not do prechecks on the financial status of those who applied for CERB.
"We [made] the decision from the beginning to send money to the greatest amount of citizens as possible," Trudeau said. "If we made the process too complicated during the application process, if we had to make too many checks before sending out the CERB, we never would have been able to send checks out to millions of Canadians in a very short period of time. They needed this money urgently. We knew that this would mean that afterwards, we would have to implement measures to correct mistakes and counter fraudulent claims."
The House of Commons has been recalled on Wednesday to pass a bill to enact additional measures in response to COVID-19.