Liberal MP’s spouse improperly collected CERB, ordered to pay back pandemic relief

Adrian Wyld

The spouse of a Liberal MP is under fire for accessing COVID relief payments improperly and must now repay the federal government in full.

MP Lisa Hepfner, who earlier praised the feds for "rolling out" the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) "to help Canadians," did not comment on the matter Tuesday.

Parliament passed the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act in 2020 to pay $2,000 monthly cheques to jobless tax filers.

"These were really complicated programs the government was rolling out," Hepfner told the Commons ethics committee last February 10. "The government was rolling out these programs to help Canadians," she added.

The MP disclosed to the Ethics Commissioner that her husband Michael Aitkens, a local CBC cameraman, faced a repayment order as he already had income and did not require COVID relief. More than 1.1 million Canadians to date have improperly claimed $2.1 billion in COVID relief.

It is not known how much Aitkens had to repay, reported Blacklock’s Reporter. However, the ethics Disclosure Summary showed the couple owned rental property in Hamilton and St. Catharines, Ontario at the time.

During the period that Canadians received CERB payments, the state broadcaster sent most employees to work from home at full pay.

"Less than 20 percent of employees, mainly those involved with essential operations such as news presentation and news gathering, reintegrated into our offices," CBC management wrote in a 2020 Financial Report.

Hepfner, a reporter for CHCH-TV in Hamilton at the time of the outbreak, confirmed she "was covering the pandemic every day."

"I was on the other side," she told the Commons heritage committee in 2022. "I was mostly tasked with covering those daily news conferences."

Federal managers testifying at 2021 hearings of the Commons public accounts committee said they warned government that relief overpayment would occur due to speedy processing of pandemic relief claims.

"We knew," testified Graham Flack, then-deputy minister of employment.

"It wasn’t an error," he clarified. "It was a known design criterion. We knew when we were launching the benefit that it was not possible in the time, we had to have real-time reconciliation."