CUB 43602

IN THE MATTER of the Employment Insurance Act

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IN THE MATTER of a claim for benefit by
REGINALD MOORE

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IN THE MATTER of an appeal to the Umpire by the
claimant from a decision of the Board of Referees,
given at Sudbury, Ontario, on July 29, 1998

D E C I S I O N

WALSH. J.

There were three before the Board of Referees in this case:

Claimant appeared and was heard before the Board of Referees, but did not appear before the Umpire. His notice of appeal that all he was seeking was a ruling respecting one week, why $56.00 was deducted as all taxes were paid at the source and a change in the wording of section (c) of the Board decision of his appeal under number 1 was denied. He agrees to a decision on the record.

The matter came before the Umpire for decision on the record and the Commission made additional representations, copy being sent to claimant.

The record has extensive material in it and I do not believe it will be useful, even to claimant, to outline at length the arguments he raised and the Commission's position on them which the Board of Referees dealt with quite thoroughly. Certainly any claimant has a right to a full explanation as to how calculations of amounts claimed by the Commission were made or why a penalty was improsed, but claimant now appears to have received a full explanation.

The Board itself corrects figures respecting overpayment and penalty resulting from an erroneous report from the former employer Nickel City Steel-Cranehill Mining Services that first day of work was October 12, 1997 instead of the correct date October 29. The overpayment is therefore reduced to $1, 098.00 and the penalty from $1, 564.00 to $1, 098.00, as explained by the Commission in its submissions to the Board of Referres.

Claimant admitted to the Board that he did not declare 62 hours of work from October 29, 1997 to November 15, 1997, stating as his reason that he needed the money to pay his rent. This is of course a totally unacceptable excuse.

On the basis of this and the material in the file, the Board found that he had failed to declare some earnings during his period of employment, failed to report receiving money in three reporting cards, and made false or misleading statements leading to a penalty, and dismissed his appeal on all three issues.

The record discloses that on a renewal claim effective October 5, 1997, claimant received benefits until November 15, 1997. He declared no work and no earnings on his report cards for 4 weeks from October 19 to November 15, 1997, but a post-audit established that this was not correct and he did not answer a request for clarification. The Commission assigned these earnings to his on-going claim for benefit and imposed a penalty. Section 19(3) of the Act provides that if a claimant fails to declare all or some of the earnings for a period for which benefits were claimed, the amount of said undeclared earnings are then deducted from the benefits paid for a number of weeks beginning with the first week for which the earnings were not declared in such manner that the amount deducted in each consecutive week equals claimant's benefits for that week. In the present case, the first non-declaration was for the week beginning October 26, 1997 and claimant's benefits were $366.00 per week so $1, 098.00 was deducted. The penalty equals this amount imposed by s.38.

Pursuant to the new section 7 of the Act, details of which need not be gone into here and are fully explained in the Observations of the Commission, there are mose stringent requirements as to the hours of work required in insurable employment to re-qualify for benefits for a five-years period after the notice of violation, in this case on June 3, 1998, and claimant was duly notified of this.

The decision of the Board of Referees on this representation by claimant and material before it does not appear to be perverse or capricious, nor erroneous in law, and claimant was heard, and hence there is no ground for reversing it pursuant to section 115(2)(a),(b) or (c) of the Act.

The appeal on all 3 issues is therefore dismissed.