(no subject)
Apr. 18th, 2020 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: government bullshit, (arguably) illness]
So you know--if you're Canadian, which you probably aren't--how Service Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency say you can apply for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (a flat $2,000/month (up to four months) for economic victims of COVID-19) through either of them, and imply that the two methods are equivalent?
They are not *remotely* equivalent. If you go through Service Canada, they dump you into the normal unemployment-benefits system, which is *not* set up with my situation in mind and demands that I actively look for work and swear to things that are not true. Meanwhile, the CRA really does just hand money out to everyone the Canadian government claims they are currently willing to hand money out to, including people like me (my income has dropped because of COVID-19, but not to $0; it *is*, however, under $1,000/month). The only remotely difficult parts are setting up your CRA MyAccount and your direct-deposit information, but I'd already done both of those previously for other things and so was able to skip over them this time.
I can't help but wonder how many people gave up because they made the mistake of going through Service Canada, and were told the only way they could get the benefits they were supposedly entitled to was by committing perjury. Fortunately I was not the first person in my family to apply: Dad lucked out and did it the right way first time, and was able to let me in on the trick to it.
(...*after* I'd spent an hour trying and failing to force my proverbial peg into the employment-insurance hole. Should have just asked him first.)
So you know--if you're Canadian, which you probably aren't--how Service Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency say you can apply for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (a flat $2,000/month (up to four months) for economic victims of COVID-19) through either of them, and imply that the two methods are equivalent?
They are not *remotely* equivalent. If you go through Service Canada, they dump you into the normal unemployment-benefits system, which is *not* set up with my situation in mind and demands that I actively look for work and swear to things that are not true. Meanwhile, the CRA really does just hand money out to everyone the Canadian government claims they are currently willing to hand money out to, including people like me (my income has dropped because of COVID-19, but not to $0; it *is*, however, under $1,000/month). The only remotely difficult parts are setting up your CRA MyAccount and your direct-deposit information, but I'd already done both of those previously for other things and so was able to skip over them this time.
I can't help but wonder how many people gave up because they made the mistake of going through Service Canada, and were told the only way they could get the benefits they were supposedly entitled to was by committing perjury. Fortunately I was not the first person in my family to apply: Dad lucked out and did it the right way first time, and was able to let me in on the trick to it.
(...*after* I'd spent an hour trying and failing to force my proverbial peg into the employment-insurance hole. Should have just asked him first.)
