One of the jobs I did back in the day was to study the efficacy, economic multiplier and abuse rates of direct payment social programs. Direct payment programs are ones that simply pay money to the program participants. People like to think these programs are rife with abuse - someone above quoted one third of all CERB payments were either error or fraud, and I'm supposing that they believe this rate to be generally true of EI, etc. I have no clue as to where that number came from...are you a researcher in the field?
When you consider that EI normally costs about $20B a year, a rate of 33% of abuse would be outrageous and the program would be scrapped. In truth, EI fraud amounts to less than 1% of total payouts, and rates are similar or lower for other direct payment programs. Is the abuse chronic, meaning "gone on for years?" Well, of course, it's something that happens on an on-going basis because the program is on-going as well.
There are some short term programs like SFI (aka Welfare) and EI that have few chronic participants, most are one time users, or individuals that use it a very small number of times. It's actually not that hard for the government today to root out abusers thanks to that fact, and most cheats are now caught thanks to the use of computers. Long term programs like AISH also have low abuse rates because the government has built in stringent reporting and application requirements.
The impact of the programs on the 99+% of users easily outweighs the cost of the abuse. It would be ludicrous to cease a program that has such positive effects on people's mental and physical health as well as economic stability for both the individual and the economy as a whole for the small amount of fraud that takes place.
What really costs a lot? Corporate welfare. Economists have long studied the efficacy of stimulus spending and corporate tax cuts to already profitable companies is one of the least effective. Those firms are already making profits of at least $500K, so have money to add staff were they truly needed. These tax breaks are nothing but a wealth transfer from you and I to executives and shareholders, and unfortunately for Alberta, many of the owners of large oil companies in the province are not Canadian, so this is also an outflow of cash from the province and even the country. The billions and billions that these cuts will cost the province will be paid for by fee increases to regular people and cuts in services that will mean we will have to source more private services and pay out of pocket, or simply go without, which is also a cost.