While COVID-19 benefits went out quickly and helped ease economic suffering, the federal government has not done enough to recover overpayments.

That’s another finding of the federal auditor-general in a just released report, in which Karen Hogan says the Trudeau Liberals did well getting the assistance to Canadians and businesses.

However, she also says Canada Revenue and Employment and Social Development Canada have not followed up verifying those payments.

”We found that overpayments of $4.6-billion were made to ineligible individuals,” the auditor-general adds.

”And we estimated that at least $27.4-billion of payments to individuals and employers should be investigated further.”

Hogan’s audit found efforts to recover overpayments have been limited with CRA collecting $2.3-billion through voluntary repayments.

She also says while the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program did help sector hardest hit, it’s not clear how effective the help was because of how little information was collected by businesses.