20 tax collectors have been fired, 600 more are being investigated, and more insight on foreign cash being injected into our elections. Plus, an honorable mention out there to a wonderful artist. All that and more come to The Krusty Canuck Podcast!
00:00:00.880Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's July 4th, 2023. Happy Independence Day to my American friends and listeners out there.
00:00:09.080Coming up with a Tuesday rant of the Cresting Out podcast, episode 214.
00:00:13.740Topics will be 20 tax collectors from the CRA being fired, 600 being investigated, and more insight on foreign cash being injected into our elections.
00:00:22.920Plus, an honorable mention out there to a wonderful artist.
00:00:26.460All that and more come to the podcast. Please stick around.
00:00:29.160Oh, listener and viewer discretion is advised because I smoke cigarettes and drop the F-bomb.
00:00:51.760There you are always what we're working.
00:00:53.680From Western Canada, this is the Krusty Canuck podcast, a Canadian veteran's point of view on political, social, economic issues, and life.
00:01:22.720If you're lucky to hear what you see, please click like and subscribe and share this content all over your social media platforms.
00:01:28.360So like the title card said, ladies and gentlemen, apparently in the news recently, and a special thank you out there to Clyde Do Something, he's got a wonderful channel on YouTube, exposed this.
00:01:41.040There have been roughly 20 employees thus far that have been fired from the Canadian Revenue Agency.
00:01:47.560Now, my American listeners and British listeners and other listeners that are not Canadian, the CRA, Canadian Revenue Agency, are the tax people, tax collectors.
00:01:55.400They're the people that send you little notices and little reminders that you owe that money every fiscal year.
00:02:01.180These are the people you have to send papers to every fiscal year to make sure that you're paying your fair share in this scheme called taxation.
00:02:09.520So apparently, according to the National Post, there's an article here that I will add up or put up for you is all, and I will read along with you.
00:02:18.080It's basically stating that 20 employees have been fired already in regards to collection of the CERB and CERB payments.
00:02:26.640Now, during the pandemic, a lot of, to my foreign listeners out there, non-Canadian listeners, we had a thing called the CERB payment, a Canadian Emergency Relief Benefit, which basically gave a lot of these individuals money throughout the month because they couldn't work or they couldn't, they lost their jobs or what have you.
00:02:50.320It's basically a glorified welfare payment, to say the least.
00:02:53.860Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this up here for you, Zal, and we're going to sit and have a little read about it.
00:03:01.580And we'll just see the buffoonery that has been bestowed on a lot of us here in regards to fraudulent payments.
00:03:08.440Now, one of my episodes, I have said, ladies and gentlemen, that there's about $15 billion worth of fraudulent payments that haven't been claimed yet by the tax people, the CRA mainly, because there are people that received these benefits during the pandemic, people that were in prison, people that weren't working, i.e. teenagers,
00:03:31.420and people that were making $100,000 plus a year, plus getting an extra $2,000 or more a month in the name of safety and protection.
00:03:41.660Now, you've heard me ramble on about my story with the tax people in this country, especially in regards to me getting an award or rewarded for my pain and suffering from the military.
00:03:52.260And they're trying to ding me $45,000 plus in fraudulent taxes, apparently.
00:03:58.180But I'll read this article for you here, too.
00:04:00.480You guys just read along, and I want you, my wonderful audience, to decide amongst yourselves, too.
00:04:05.060CRA fires 20 employees, investigating hundreds more for claiming CERB while working for the tax agency.
00:04:11.360Late Friday evening, a spokesperson confirmed the organization was investigating 600 of its workers it suspects inappropriately receiving who have received a $2,000 per month CERB payment.
00:04:22.480This comes from Christopher Nardi of the National Post, one of Canada's national papers.
00:04:26.820So, Ottawa, the Canadian Revenue Agency, has fired 20 of its employees and is investigating roughly 580 others for claiming the Canada Emergency Response Benefit to CERB while working for the tax authority.
00:04:40.760They were gainfully employed during the pandemic, and they're still getting paid, plus getting some extra payola under the chuff or under the table from, you know, themselves, basically, because they're the ones that oversaw a lot of these payments.
00:04:54.960In a statement, late Friday evening, agency spokesperson Sylvia Branch confirmed the organization was investigating 600 of its own workers it expects inappropriately received the $2,000 per month CERB while employed with the CRA.
00:05:07.440She also confirmed the agency had fired 20 of them to date, but more are surely to come as the investigation progresses.
00:05:18.780So, the latest data means that the CRA suspects up to 1% of its 60,000 employees may have collected CERB while ineligible.
00:05:28.580A number of the agency calls very limited.
00:05:31.040The new data shows the CRA has found a staggering increase in cases of problems with employees collecting CERB since March, when the agency reported to MPs on the House Public Accounts Committee that it expected 10 of its employees had ineligibly claimed CERB while working.
00:05:45.220Okay, so it doesn't matter if you have 60,000 people working for you, when you have a percentage of employees skimming off the top.
00:05:56.380I know for a fact in the private sector, that's a big, big no-no, and you shouldn't do that.
00:06:01.980They call that, I think, embezzlement, right?
00:06:05.120So, in return, when you think of these individuals who have skimmed and scammed, this is what they deserve.
00:06:16.920At around the same time, the CRA said that it had fired a number of its staff who received CERB while working for the agency, but refused to specify how many because it was too small to disclose without creating a privacy risk.
00:06:31.220Yeah, okay, we'll get to privacy later.
00:06:33.880And according to a document table in the House in response to a question posed by the Conservatives, okay,
00:06:39.380two government sources who were granted anonymity so they could freely discuss internal affairs said the review came after pressure from National Review Minister,
00:06:50.040Diane Laboutier, I can't pronounce her name, my apologies to my French audience out there, Laboutier,
00:06:54.980who expressed serious skepticism about the low number of employees investigated at the time.
00:07:00.920As the CRA is responsible for administering the Income Tax Act and many COVID-19 benefits, the highest standard of employee conduct must be upheld.
00:07:10.700The CRA understands the importance of transparency and integrity, Branch said.
00:07:14.300The CRA also takes seriously its obligations to ensure that both Canadians and its employees are aware that the CRA takes any form of wrongdoing very, very seriously.
00:07:23.500You make too much money, you have to give us more.
00:07:25.960You make too much money, you got to pay it forward.
00:07:29.080You know, even though the Income Tax Act came in Canada in 1917 to help pay for those poor guys in the trenches back in France and everywhere else in the world under the Canadian flag at that time,
00:07:41.580which was the Red Ensign, but anyway, I digress.
00:08:21.800The program was ended September 2020, and those still unemployed had their cases transferred to the unemployment insurance system.
00:08:27.940In its statement, the agency noted that being employed by the CRA did not necessarily imply ineligibility for CERB.
00:08:33.800So it's reviewing each file on a case-by-case basis.
00:08:36.840The CRA employs individuals with a variety of employment profiles, such as temporary and student contracts,
00:08:42.120and as such, individuals may have been eligible to receive the CERB at the time it was available, reads the statement.
00:08:49.360The CRA's internal investigations are but a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of verifications it will have to conduct to recoup the billions of dollars in COVID benefit overpayments.
00:09:00.460Now, they had their wrists slap about this before, earlier this year, $15 billion fraudulent payments.
00:09:11.600As of January 19th, the agency had warned nearly 1 million Canadians that they were clawing back on some or all the COVID-19 benefits for a total of $4.2 billion as of that date,
00:09:21.400with more to come as the CRA in Employment and Social Development Canada, ESDC, conducted more post-payment verifications.
00:09:30.680Auditor General Karen Hogan also warned in a report in December that both departments need to look into up to $27 billion in payments,
00:09:41.200she flagged as suspicious across a dozen pandemic benefits, mostly notable of the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy, CEWS.
00:09:49.960But Hogan also found that the CRA and the ESDC were not prepared for the daunting task of recouping all that money,
00:09:57.120lambasting the lack of rigor, lack of balls, basically, in their recovery plans and efforts meant they would likely fail to recover significant amounts of overpayments.
00:10:25.580The CRA is not the only federal department that was tasked with dueling out pandemic benefits that has since had to fire employees who unduly applied for the CERB.
00:10:34.060In February, Mayor Crescenzi, the head of the ESD Integrity Service, told MPs, the Public Accounts Committee,
00:10:40.540that her department had fired 49 workers who had received the CERB during the pandemic.
00:10:45.320It was discovered that some of our employees had availed themselves the CERB, Crescenzi told MPs, on the House Public Accounts Committee,
00:10:51.980those individuals that did break the trust in the employer-employee relationship have been terminated.
00:17:16.140Now, she come across this article from 2017 from the National Post in regards to money coming into Canada from foreign conglomerates.
00:17:26.400Now, it's been big news recently, too, with Chinese influence and Chinese millionaires and Chinese business trying to call the shots for our leaders.
00:19:41.140Yet the outcome of the 2015 election was skewed by money from wealthy foreigners,
00:19:44.940alleges the complaint submitted by Canada decides a registered society with three listed directors,
00:19:50.340including Joan Crockett, a former Conservative MP from Calgary Centre,
00:19:53.280who lost her seat to Liberal Kent Ayer, now an MP for the once-long-held total writing of the Minister of Veterans Affairs.
00:20:00.360This is when Kent was there at the time, back in 2017.
00:20:03.100He got in shit, too, for being a really, really bad guy.
00:20:05.960Regardless if he's in a wheelchair or not, he just wasn't a nice person.
00:20:09.220You know, he was quite the pig, apparently.
00:20:11.480And two other directors include Chen Hallman, University of Toronto political science student.
00:20:15.680Okay, the number of third parties registered during the 2015 general election were more than doubled to 114 compared with 55 in the 2011 election.
00:20:24.380Okay, Americans are rightly concerned about Russia hacking U.S. government emails.
00:20:36.280And they're probably one of the most woke environmental groups out there in the name of looking after their marginalized, what have you, too.
00:20:44.800But they have a little too much money and a little too much time in their hands in trying to thwart and influence people as we speak.
00:20:51.800As far as I'm concerned, they are no better than communists, ladies and gentlemen.
00:21:06.280So, in total, 114 third parties spent $6 million.
00:21:09.660And many of those third parties were funded by California and New York-based Tides Foundation, which is known in Canada for holding numerous anti-Canadian oil campaigns.
00:21:19.500Now, I'm not going to read any more of this article because it's old.
00:21:23.520But I need to say, I will keep this in my description.
00:24:46.400When I think about the plight that's been going on in this country and the plight that's going on in the United States and the plight that's going on into Democratic countries all over the world, believe it or not, a couple of her tracks that just put me in places that just helped me forget that.
00:25:01.160She has a song called Never Enough, and it's quite the love tune.
00:25:06.220And, you know, I think of my wife, and I think of people in my past, and I think of some of the friends I had and some of the friends I still have because of her music.
00:25:15.440And her voice and her harmonies just takes me away to better places.
00:25:20.520So well done, Nina Bolt, for that track.
00:25:23.080Like, an automatic call, I think, was the stepping stone that really gave me insight to writing my story.
00:25:50.360Well, so Miss Nina Bolt, if you are listening to this, well done.
00:25:56.600And I highly recommend, ladies and gentlemen, that you check out her email, or not her email, her website, and check out her music for yourselves.
00:26:05.360You can tell she's heavily influenced with a lot of the 80s synth pop and synth rock groups of the day.
00:26:16.560And she's kind of influenced, too, roughly by The Doors and David Bowie, kind of like her style, her lights, her attire, and just really, really decent songs.
00:26:28.660You know, I'm not trying to kiss her butt here or anything like that.
00:26:30.940But if you want a change from the mundane, from the terrible, and I think you and I can all agree, ladies and gentlemen, that some of the music that's out there today is really bad.
00:26:43.360It takes you away to better places, you know what I mean?
00:26:49.500But when you listen to a lot of top 10 radio, this is basically the feeling I get.
00:26:58.460But when I listen to Nina and other artists like her, too, there's a couple out there, too.
00:27:02.600There's a Kid Moxie, a group called Gunship.
00:27:06.120But just wow, just holy shit, it takes me back.
00:27:13.060So once again, if you're listening out there, Nina, well done on you, madam, and well done on your husband, your boyfriend, the collaborations you've done.
00:27:20.980And so far, I look forward to more of your music coming out.
00:27:24.720Apparently, in the next few weeks, there'll be some new music coming out by her.
00:27:28.040So keep your ear to the ground and try your best to download some of her tunes today.
00:27:33.760I'm just thoroughly impressed with what she has done so far, and I highly recommend, ladies and gentlemen.
00:27:49.820So anyway, ladies and gentlemen, carrying on this episode, episode 214 of Tuesday Rant.
00:27:56.600And, of course, you've heard me ramble on about the tax collectors.
00:27:59.100You've heard me ramble on about some of the idiosyncrasies that have just plagued us all.
00:28:08.600I don't know what to really say and do is that let's hopefully the powers of being nailed these individuals and look deeper and further.
00:28:17.180Well, we've also seen a lot of these individuals that have investigated and have tried to find the truth and not get the truth and get sideswiped and get gaslighted and get labeled dirty names.
00:28:29.260So we, as the Canadian people, ladies and gentlemen, we out there should ask the tough questions.
00:28:35.280So I highly recommend that we call our MPs and get to the bottom of it.
00:29:01.320But when you hear something like this, and yet there are Canadians out there struggling every day with gasoline because we've got the new carbon taxes out there.
00:29:09.220Everybody, we're going to save the world.
00:29:10.740We're going to save the world because they're going to take minor money and spend more of it.
00:29:17.680And people that sit there and think taxes are a good thing.
00:29:21.800You know, that's the price you pay to be in the civilized world.
00:29:23.900Well, you can still be a civilized human being and not fork over your cash because somebody with nice teeth and nice hair says he's going to save the planet and then dance around with his fucking fairy socks, expecting magical things to happen.
00:29:37.420It's not because planetary, ladies and gentlemen.
00:29:39.840Anyway, I've been Krusty Canuck on this 4th of July, 2023.
00:29:43.840Once again, happy Independence Day to my American listeners and friends out there.
00:29:47.740And a special mention and salute to you, Ms. Nina Bolt, for making such great music and keeping the spirit of that genre alive.
00:30:14.520But it's because of people like you that tune into this.
00:30:17.740And a special thank you out there to Clyde Do Something for exposing the CRA monstrosity of embezzlement, because that's what it is, really.
00:30:28.300And a special thank you out there to everybody who has committed, who's gone to work, paid their bills, and doing their best with what they have.
00:30:40.240And I salute all the workers that have tried to make a difference.
00:30:43.300It doesn't matter if they're ambulance drivers, it doesn't matter if you're lawyers, it doesn't matter if you're doctors, frontline workers, truckers alike, blue-collar aficionados.