Where Ontario can make cuts: Stop giving welfare to refugees who should be deported

Special to National Post Josh Dehaas

Josh Dehaas: Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk’s team found more than 500 profiles that raised red flags about their immigration status

Late last year, Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk raised a number of concerns about the province’s $10-billion-per-year welfare system. She noted that the province was owed $790 million in overpayments and wasn’t doing much to try to get them back. She also flagged that, rather than addressing fraud tips in the 30 days required by the ministry’s own rules, managers were taking nearly a year on average to investigate. Most appallingly, Lysyk highlighted that managers were sometimes failing to ask the most basic questions about eligibility. Does the recipient live in Canada? Is he or she allowed to live in Canada?

Lysyk’s team found more than 500 profiles that raised red flags about their immigration status, including refugee claimants who had been getting paid long after they should have been either deported or reclassified as permanent residents. The province says that, as of November, there were 1,110 individuals or families listed in the welfare system as refugee claimants for more than five years.

Managers were taking nearly a year on average to investigate

At a committee meeting in March, Progressive Conservative MP Goldie Ghamari asked assistant deputy minister Richard Steele why the ministry wasn’t routinely checking immigration statuses with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. “What has to happen now is that individual requests … have to get faxed to IRCC,” he said. “Faxed?” Ghamari responded. “Yes, faxed,” Steele confirmed.

Lisa MacLeod, Minister of Children, Community and Social Services, has been working with the federal government on a plan to electronically flag people who are slated for deportation, so that taxpayers are no longer paying for failed refugee claimants. That seems like a no-brainer, and it should have happened years ago.

Journalists tend to scoff when Premier Doug Ford when he says he can find enough “efficiencies” to close the $15 billion deficit left by the Liberals without cutting frontline services or raising taxes. After all, he long claimed that he and his brother, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, claimed to have found $1 billion worth of efficiencies in the City of Toronto’s budget — a number that was, to put it mildly, generous. Still, the auditor general has shown that getting serious about fraud would help get the province get a lot closer to balanced books.

full story at https://nationalpost.com/opinion/hundreds-of-refugees-continue-to-get-welfare-even-after-being-deported-ontario-auditor-general