Canada 's fraud report unemployment benefits program, Employment Insurance (EI), while existent, seems to be a relatively small problem according to the annual Report of the Auditor General of Canada .
Indeed, the program runs at a significant surplus, even after adding eligibility to those experiencing unemployment due to pregnancy, or illness of a family member or themselves.
In fact, the problem of fraud is so small that it has not even been mentioned in the Auditor General's annual report since 2003.
However, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police report that when fraud does occur, it is difficult to detect when an employer is involved.
Namely, someone collecting unemployment benefits goes to work for an employer, but both fail to report the worker and his wages.
When Canada fraud report unemployment occurs, it is less likely the Canada Revenue Agency will find discrepancies between the individual's income and what the employer reports as wages, particularly as the matching program that correlates individual and employer reports have several flaws.
At opposite ends of this balance are two issues.
First, the protection of Social Insurance Numbers in Canada has been slow to evolve, and ID thieves can potentially procure this information and use to collect EI.
At the other end, many report complaints about the EI system, such as inefficiency of call centres, and that more than half of people trying to call in get a busy signal. So, while the opportunity to commit fraud against the system exists, there are likely much faster ways for the dishonest to make money.
If fraud against the Canada fraud report unemployment system were to spread, the resulting damage to the budget would be exponential, as the government would be paying out benefits to those committing fraud on one hand, as well as missing out on the collection of income taxes on those claiming unemployment.
