en francais During the Covid-19 pandemic the Canadian government enacted a social program to help Canadians thru this difficult time. Unfortunately this program had little oversight and no safeguards against abuse or fraud.
There's always some amount of fraud in government run programs, but CERB was thrown together so quickly we believe the level of fraud is somewhere around 46% and heres how we prove it.
The Napkin Math
Canada's population is around 37M
Our market participation rate is about ~65%
The governments official unemployment rate was around 17%
Using these numbers we can calculate that 37M * 65% * 17% = 4 million people should be on CERB, but we're seeing 7.5 million.
That means 46% of CERB applications are fraudulent!
And when you consider our normal unemployment rate is about 6% per year, only 11% of people should really be on CERB, but it's impossible to identify this group of people from the standard unemployed.
CERB money spent of iPhones and iPads
It's clear a lot of CERB money was not used as it was intended, and a quick online search will result in hundreds of posts like this:
I see a lot of people who live at home, rent-free with no bills to pay flex spending their government CERB on an iPad or new clothes like it’s not supposed to make them look like the biggest idiot??
— Bram Grinwis (@BramGrinwis) April 23, 2020
Blessed my pops with a new iPad and keyboard case because money is good rn (CERB) pic.twitter.com/ITR15C5VXG
— melanin poppin (@aniceguyonline) August 4, 2020
Waiting for the CERB to be extended so I can go get me a new Camera and the new iPhone and a new iPad Pro pic.twitter.com/kegizUPg9m
— Omar Youssef (@omar___a1) September 26, 2020
The CERB program should have been given as tax free loans, in this way it can help those who need it and ensure the money would not be abused.
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