B.C.'s Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman has been cracking down on welfare overpayments. (CBC)

The B.C. government's plan to take hundreds of welfare recipients to court to recoup what it says are overpayments of at least $3 million is prompting allegations of poor bashing by the opposition New Democrats.

Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman said Tuesday the Liberals don't believe they're picking on some of the poorest people in the province by demanding the money back.

Statistics provided by Coleman's ministry show 3,000 welfare cases in B.C. could land in court because of debts of more than $1,000 each.

'It's our responsibility to get it back.'—B.C. Social Development Minister Rich Coleman

The government statistics reveal that 317 cases have been referred to small-claims court this year.

Coleman said the government is taking the cases to court because it is protecting the system for people who need welfare payments.

He said the government started filing hundreds of cases in recent months in order to beat statute-of-limitations deadlines that would void the possible collections. It also gives recipients time to work out repayment plans.

"We'll go down to $5, $10 a month in order to get it, but the fact of the matter is if somebody has actually taken something from the system they didn't deserve, it's our responsibility to get it back," Coleman said.

Spike in number of cases

New Democrat social development critic Shane Simpson said he found it strange the government recently awoke to welfare overpayments after years of pursuing about 60 cases a year.

Simpson said he questions why the number of overpayment cases had recently spiked to more than 300 people.

"It's either a case of them desperately trying to find every nickel and dime they can in the couch, including $5 and $10 garnishees off welfare cheques," he said. "Or it's a sense of this minister wanting to deflect from all of the other issues that are facing this government."

Simpson said the provincewide uproar over the government's harmonized sales tax initiative has the Liberals looking for other issues to turn attention away from the unpopular levy.

But Simpson did his best to bounce the welfare issue back to Coleman when reminded that during the 1990s then-premier Mike Harcourt of the NDP promised to catch what he called welfare cheats.

"I'm not sure what premier Harcourt said at the time," said Simpson. "What I know is that today in 2010 we have a minister who all of a sudden has filed 300-plus claims in a matter of a couple of weeks, when he at best was filing 10 or 20 or 30 a year prior to that. Why now?"