Over 15 million Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) applications have processed, totaling over $43 billion in benefits being paid. However, some Canadians might be facing penalties for making fraudulent claims.

According to a draft version of legislation expected to be tabled by the federal government, anyone who made fraudulent claims on their application could face up to a $5,000 fine, a penalty double what they received in improper benefits, and jail time. The legislation states that making a false or misleading claim, failing to declare all income, knowingly receiving an income benefit that a person isn’t eligible for, non-disclosure of facts or facilitating omission of any facts are all listed as offences. Committing just one of those listed offences will land a person with a penalty.

Canadians will also be penalized if they continue to collect the benefit while able to return to work. This includes those who fail to resume self-employment when reasonable to do so, decline a reasonable job offer when able to work, or fail to return to work when requested by an employer. Those who refuse to return to work when reasonable and continue to collect benefits could see a retroactive fine for up to triple the amount that was improperly claimed once the individual was able to return to work.

There are concerns that the bill could force vulnerable workers into unsafe conditions but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that’s not the intention of the bill.

“We are giving ourselves the ability to sanction fraudsters who are trying to deliberately take advantage of the system during a crisis and when people are most vulnerable. We do not have the intention of penalizing people who made a mistake but we have to have a system that is capable of targeting people who deliberately defrauded the system,” said Trudeau.