CERB Repayment

Nearly 100,000 students have been asked to repay the CERB benefits that they claimed during the COVID-19 pandemic and will soon get a break. The amount of CERB benefits that students must repay will be reduced by the amount they may have received through the COVID aid program for students.

Carla Qualtrough, minister of labor, workforce development, and disability inclusion, said the government discovered that many students who received benefits under the CERB should have applied for CERB when it followed up on the benefit payments it made during the epidemic.

In contrast to the CESB program, which was created to assist students who were unable to find employment in the first place, the CERB program distributed benefits to workers who had lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic. The government issued a remission order on June 2 to help reduce some of the students’ debts. According to Qualtrough, this order may be helpful to 98,000 students. In contrast to CESB payments, which were about $1,250 per month, CERB payouts were about $2,000 per month.

According to Qualtrough, the CESB amount can be utilized to reduce the amount of money that students must pay. A student must have applied for CERB by September 30th, 2020, and not have received any other benefits, such as CESB, to be eligible for the remission order. The applicant must also satisfy one of the following three requirements: they had to miss four weeks of work because of COVID-19; they were actively seeking employment, or they had to work and earn $1,000 or less before taxes.