'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
U.S. House Republicans on Wednesday began their promised aggressive oversight of the Biden administration, focusing on what watchdogs described as "indications of widespread fraud" in federal coronavirus aid programs initiated under then-president Donald Trump.
GOP lawmakers complained that too little attention was paid to the problems when Democrats controlled Congress. Democrats blamed the Trump administration for much of the mess.
More than 1,000 people have pleaded guilty or have been convicted on federal charges of defrauding the myriad COVID-19 relief programs that Congress established in the early days of the pandemic. More than 600 other people and entities face federal fraud charges.
But that's just the start, according to investigators who testified as the House Oversight and Accountability Committee held its first hearing in the new Congress on fraud and waste in federal pandemic spending. Congress approved about US$4.6 trillion in spending from six coronavirus relief laws, beginning in March 2020, when Trump was in the White House.
"We owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of the greatest theft of American taxpayer dollars in history," said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the committee chairman.
Gene L. Dodaro, head of the Government Accountability Office, told lawmakers that it will be some time before the full extent of fraud is known. The inspector general for the Small Business Administration has more than 500 ongoing investigations involving loan programs designed to help businesses meet operating expenses during the pandemic. The Labor Department's internal watchdog continues to open at least 100 unemployment insurance fraud investigations each week.
The GAO said the more than 1,000 convictions related to COVID-19 relief fraud are one measure of how extensive it was. "There are definitely indications of widespread fraud, but it's impossible to estimate right now what the full extent will be," Dodaro said.
The GAO reported in December that an extrapolation of Labor Department data would suggest more than US$60 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance payments during the pandemic in just that one program. The GAO also warned that such an extrapolation has inherent limitations and should be interpreted with caution.
Still, lawmakers are anxious to understand how much theft has occurred and what can be done to stop it in future emergencies.
"We must identify where this money went, how much ended up in the hands of fraudsters or ineligible participants, and what should be done to ensure it never happens again," Comer said.
Some 20 inspectors general work collaboratively to investigate pandemic relief spending. Michael Horowitz, who chairs a committee Congress created in March 2020 to lead oversight of COVID-19 spending, said data analysis is critical to detecting fraud.
For example, this week the committee issued a fraud alert regarding the use of questionable Social Security numbers to obtain US$5.4 billion in pandemic-related loans and grants. He said a team of data scientist compared tens of millions of applications with data at the Social Security Administration to see if they fully matched the SSA's records.
"Over 69,000 didn't," said Horowitz, who also serves as the inspector general at the Justice Department. "This type of advanced data analytics is transforming how we do oversight."
One of the biggest factors in the COVID fraud that occurred was the need to get dollars out to people and businesses as quickly as possible. Horowitz said it is critical that agencies assess applicant eligibility before payments are sent out, but the Small Business Administration allowed entities applying for Paycheck Protection Program to self-certify they were eligible. He said that resulted in US$3.6 billion going out to some 57,000 applicants on the federal government's do-not pay list, "a list the SBA did not bother to cross-check."
The House committee, which plans to examine an array of hot-button issues, includes some of the most strident critics of the Biden administration as well as some of its most ardent supporters. The clash in perspectives was evident from the start as Comer complained that the Biden administration faced little to no scrutiny last Congress.
"This committee has for too long stood on the sidelines while taxpayer dollars were wasted by bureaucrats whose only priority is getting money out the door," Comer said.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the COVID relief programs "were by no means perfect." But he said the result of the programs was the shortest economic recession on record.
He blamed the Trump administration for allowing much of the fraud to occur. He said organized criminals and fraudsters took advantage of the overwhelming crush in demand for assistance and the problem was compounded by decisions "that hamstrung" the government's oversight.
"The Trump administration regularly told agencies to ignore data reporting requirements," Raskin said.
Horowitz said three programs that received about US$2 trillion in funding account for most of the fraud that occurred: two loan programs designed to help small businesses and the unemployment insurance programs administered by the states.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.