Former intelligence officer Tom Quiggin, who runs a personal podcast on national security issues, took part in an ongoing private investigation, which, in his words, points to, among other things, an illegal scheme that allows some individuals in Canada to have up to 5 unique Social Insurance Numbers (SINs), each used to request government subsidies.
According to sources tied to Quiggin through the immigration bureaucracy in Toronto, there have been cases in Ontario in which people have applied for government COVID-19 Canada Emergency Relief Benefits (CERB) under "dodgy" or illegal circumstances, and have used fake SIN numbers to receive aid.
Sputnik: Each Canadian is supposed to have one Social Insurance Number, but you recently tweeted that you know about situations where one person had up to five different SINs. How is that even possible?
Tom Quiggin: You would think that in any kind of reasonable situation that if you apply to the government for anything – taxes, a job, benefits, that they would run your SIN number up against their own list and see if you at least have the same name as the person who claims to own that SIN number. The reality is – most of the time they are not doing that. Many government systems, when you have to put in a SIN number – there’s nothing behind it, it doesn’t check with CRA. And CRA – the Canada Revenue Agency - is the only organization that can legally issue a SIN number.
According to @TomTSEC these screenshots show communication with a person, whose relative got the $2000 CERB benefit using fake SIN number. @TomTSEC also shared partial scans of corresponding documents containing personal details of applicants, which I was asked not to disclose. pic.twitter.com/YHz5Os7aUu
— Denis Bolotsky (@BolotskySputnik) April 20, 2020
Under current regulations the Canadian government provides those who have lost income due to the COVID-19 pandemic taxable monthly payments of $2000 for a period of up to 16 weeks.
Sputnik: Is that a widespread problem? How many illegal SIN numbers are there?
Tom Quiggin: There are many-many thousands of fake social insurance numbers in Ontario, and I suspect across Canada, but I only have the evidence for Ontario. And what is happening is that CRA – the Canada Revenue Agency is aware of this - they’ve been written, they’ve been told about it, but they refuse to deal with it because to deal with the problem of fake SIN numbers would be to expose a much larger corruption problem.
According to Statistics Canada, over one million Canadians have lost jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic in the last month, with more than 5 million people applying for all forms of federal emergency unemployment help since 15 March.
Sputnik: What did the government tell you about the problem? What is their excuse for not fixing it?
Tom Quiggin: We have actual documents from senior members of government where they are being informed about this problem, and then we have documents coming back from senior members of government where they either push the problem off on somebody else, even though it’s their responsibility, or the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was informed, and there is a letter coming back from the RCMP that says “well, yes, you know, this is an issue, but it’s not really a financial crime, it would have to be a commodity, so we’re not going to investigate it.
A representative of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) did not elaborate on the existence of illegal SIN numbers, and wrote in an email that the agency “is not aware of an attempt by Canadians to misuse SIN numbers to apply for CERB benefits”. The country's national and federal police service - the RCMP - chose not to comment on SIN number management and refused to confirm active investigations related to the matter, but stated that that Service Canada (run by the government's Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) department) “could refer a case to the RCMP for criminal investigation if it suspects that a criminal group or entity facilitated a fraud”. The ESDC, in turn, asserted that any breach of Social Insurance Number information is considered to be very serious, but refused to provide further details "to protect [ESDC’s] integrity processes.”
