Please Advise! Does the 'C' in CRA Stand for Crooks?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

The Canada Revenue Agency says 20 employees have been terminated after an internal review found they had received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit during the pandemic, despite the fact they still had jobs at the CRA. The agency says as many as 600 employees are being investigated for receiving inappropriate CERB money.

What do you think about this?

Signed,

T. Foray

Dear Tee,

Dr. Steve is not surprised. The CRA's business is money. If you worked for a dentist, wouldn't you expect a good dental plan? And if you work for Revenue Canada of course you expect cash. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink — it's only natural you'd want to wet your beak.

This theft was an inside job, which seems appropriate for office workers. Outdoors they're helpless. Just to clear up any confusion, however: the people being investigated in this case are not the same ones who call you up randomly claiming to be from the CRA and threatening you with jail if you don't buy them a bunch of PlayStation gift cards. Those people are a bunch of lying con artists and scammers. Whereas the people in this case are completely legitimate CRA employees, who were pulling a scam. Totally different group. They wouldn't be caught dead at the same clubs.

More employees are under investigation, facing dismissal and perhaps worse. But they will land on their feet — possibly with the federal Conservative party. Pierre Poilievre will surely want to keep them on retainer so he can trot them out at every rally when he starts talking about how government is picking your pocket. And here they are folks, CRA Fagin and the Artful Dodgers Dance Troupe! Let's give them a big round of rotten fruit!

But if Poilievre wants to push that theme, it won't fit. Anti-government messaging usually posits a sinister central authority. Big government, they say, is a malevolent spider with thousands of all-seeing eyes, sitting in a terrible web that stretches over every aspect of your life. But this? This wasn't big government. This was little people. This was Jane and Joe Desk Jockey. Once upon a time they might have stolen pens and staplers. Then CERB gave them the opportunity to up their pilfering game. If they worked at a bakery it would have been cinnamon buns and Kaiser rolls.

Besides, Pierre, you can't complain about lazy, good-for-nothing civil servants and then get upset when they show some initiative. Especially since some of your political role models are right there with their own noses in the trough. An American program designed to get businesses through the pandemic, the Paycheck Protection Program, forgave loans to prominent GOP wingnut sleazes like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene — awkward when they were busy barking about the socialist evil of student loan forgiveness. It's enough to make you suspect MTG might be selling space lasers to George Soros out of the back of her Ford F-150.

As for the CRA staffers, perhaps they just get tired. They take a lot of abuse. One day they said, “Nobody likes us, everybody hates us, let's go eat some CERB.” These civil servants decided it was time to serve themselves. They saw opportunity and seized it, and for that you have to give them credit. There's probably an appropriate tax form for that — maybe a T7CAA. Check the CRA website for more information.