Hon. Percy E. Downe: My question is to the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In 2010, I was contacted by residents of Prince Edward Island who collect a United Kingdom state pension. These pensions are indexed to inflation for pensioners in the United Kingdom as well as for those living in many other countries, including the United States. However, for U.K. pensioners living in Canada, that is not the case. Not only is this unfair to those who face pensions of declining value as a result of inflation, it represents hundreds of millions of dollars — $450 million, according to one estimate — that is not coming to the benefit of the Canadian economy.

The U.K. government policy stands in sharp contrast to Canada where pension payments are always indexed regardless of where in the world the recipient lives. When I first learned of this situation, I wrote to the finance minister at the time, Jim Flaherty, to ask what the Canadian government was doing to alleviate this problem. He responded that they had been working on it for years, but the U.K. government would not change its position and fix the problem.

Senator Boehm, as the United Kingdom is trying to negotiate a new free trade deal with Canada, this would appear to be an excellent opportunity for the Government of Canada to impress upon its U.K. counterpart that correcting this disparity in order to have all U.K. pensions in Canada indexed is a precondition of any negotiations of a free trade deal.

Taking this into account and the role of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade in examining free trade agreements, could you advise the Senate on what issues your committee intends to study over the next year, and if the concerns I just raised could also be considered by your committee, hopefully before the conclusion of any free trade agreement with the United Kingdom?