Senator Plett: They have not offered it to me, no.

Senator Plett: Well, for all of those people in Canada that are watching and listening to us here — and according to yesterday’s email chain that many of us received there are a lot of people listening — I think the answer to the question that I asked was “no.” If you don’t want to answer that, I guess I have to answer that.

I heard the answer to my question was “no.”

Let’s see if we can do better on the second question.

Last week, the Canadian Pork Council told a House agriculture committee that the Trudeau government’s planned vaccine mandate for interprovincial trucking will be the straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s the Canadian Pork Council that said that, not a politician.

The council says it wasn’t consulted by the Trudeau government about this mandate. Their chair, Rick Bergmann from my province of Manitoba, told the committee this mandate would be devastating for his industry saying that “the implementation of that rule will set us up for guaranteed failure.”

Leader, why is the Trudeau government intent on imposing a new restriction? The Trudeau government has never brought forward the scientific basis for this restriction. Where is it? What happened to following the science?

Senator Plett: I think I made that clear at the end of my speech. We support the bill and we support it moving to committee, and we support it moving to committee today, so we are again reluctantly helping this government. Yes, I would say that is in the affirmative to your question.

Senator Plett: We attended briefings on this bill as we always do. No, I did not ask the government for anything personally.

[Translation]

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Thank you, Your Honour. My question today, again, is for the Government Representative in the Senate. Leader, the Emergencies Act is revoked, but the Trudeau government mandates that sparked the protests remain in place. Provinces all across the country are dropping their mandates and giving hope to Canadian families and businesses.

Just yesterday in this chamber, as we were debating the Prime Minister’s non-existent emergency, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia were putting forward their plans to ease restrictions. Yet the Trudeau government still hasn’t said that it will shelve their proposed vaccine mandate for interprovincial trucking.

Leader, I asked you recently to confirm that this foolish idea is off the table, and you didn’t really answer my question. Now that in itself isn’t a big surprise. Today, I’m going to give you another chance. Also, you gave me an opportunity yesterday to answer a question with either a “yes” or “no.” So today I’m going to afford you the same opportunity: a yes-or-no answer. Will the Trudeau government call off its interprovincial trucking mandate?

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act (Guaranteed Income Supplement).

As explained by Senator Cordy, this bill is straightforward. It contains only one clause that amends the definition of the word “income,” and now even in one clause, Senator Griffin has found out that the government again has messed up. Nevertheless, the bill amends the definition of the word “income” in the Old Age Security Act in order to exempt pandemic relief benefits from the calculation of the Guaranteed Income Supplement or Allowance benefits beginning in July 2022.

Any payments received by seniors under the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act, Part VIII.‍4 of the Employment Insurance Act, the Canada Recovery Benefits Act, or the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit Act will not be counted as income when determining eligibility for benefits under the Old Age Security Act.

These changes will not impact Old Age Security payments because OAS benefits are not income tested. They will, however, impact Guaranteed Income Supplement benefits and Guaranteed Income Supplement Allowance benefits.

Colleagues, the Conservative caucus supports this initiative. We have been saying for months that seniors who relied on the pandemic relief programs should not be penalized for doing so. It is cruel public policy to offer support to our most vulnerable in the midst of a public health crisis only to claw it back later.

But we do not support the incompetence that made this bill necessary. We are again being asked to fix mistakes that have been made due to the Liberal government’s bad management and habitual contempt for Parliament.

Let me remind you that no sooner had this pandemic begun than the government attempted to grant itself the power to raise taxes, debt and spending without parliamentary approval for almost two full years. January 1, 2022, is when the powers that they were asking Parliament to approve would have expired. Even wartime governments did not have such sweeping powers. Yet, on March 4, 2020, they had the nerve to ask for it in the very first COVID bill, Bill C-13.

It was in this same bill that Conservatives had to fight to get sunset clauses placed on COVID programs, because this government does not place value on being responsible regarding the expenditure of tax dollars. We had to insist that the government table regular COVID spending reports to the House of Commons Health and Finance Committees, because this government does not place value on transparency. We had to insist that the House of Commons Finance Committee have the right to recall Parliament if any abuses were identified, because this government does not place any value on accountability.

We should have known right there that we were in for quite a ride during the pandemic, because, as it turned out, this was only the beginning of their incompetence and their undisguised disdain for Parliament.

In bill after bill throughout this pandemic, the government quickly established a clear pattern of introducing flawed legislation at the last minute without consulting the other parties in Parliament and then demanding that it be rushed through. Senators — with a metaphorical gun to their heads — complied repeatedly for the sake of Canadians.

You may recall the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program for small businesses. It was announced on May 20, 2020, as a program to “provide important relief for small businesses experiencing financial hardship . . . .” The only problem was that the program contained two major flaws that would limit its effectiveness.

First, the program was designed so that businesses would not be eligible for the rent assistance until they had a revenue drop of at least 70%. Second, only landlords could apply for the assistance, not businesses.

Although the Conservative Party flagged these problems within 24 hours of the Prime Minister’s announcement and called on the government to fix them, the government did nothing for 26 weeks. It wasn’t until November 19, 2020, when we found ourselves in this chamber considering legislation to fix the problem identified six months earlier.

The only problem was that the new legislation that introduced the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy also had a fatal flaw. It required businesses to pay their rent before they could apply for assistance to pay that rent.

If you recall, the government was informed of the error after it had already introduced the bill in the House of Commons. They then scrambled to fix the error by creating an amendment. But after erring in the drafting of the bill, they also erred in the drafting of the amendment. So the Deputy Speaker of the House had to rule it out of order.

We ended up with a flawed bill being tabled in this chamber and had to watch the spectacle of the Minister of Finance telling us she was going to instruct the Canada Revenue Agency to ignore the problems in the bill we were about to pass, because the government was going to introduce legislation to fix it at some point in the future.

Let me give you one more example: Bill C-17. This bill was introduced in the House of Commons on June 10, 2020. It did four things: made changes to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy; enacted the Time Limits and Other Periods Act; authorized the Canada Revenue Agency to share information with other government departments to facilitate a one-time payment to persons with disabilities; and, finally, made amendments to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act. The problem was that it did none of these things well, because of the government’s failure to consult.

At the time, the House of Commons was only sitting a couple of days a week. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer suggested that the government take a few more days to debate and amend the bill in order to get it right, but the government refused.

Bill C-17 never made it to second reading. Instead, the government reworked the bill in an attempt to fix the problems and reintroduced it six weeks later as Bill C-20. But once again, although improved, it was still flawed. The government had now delayed pandemic supports for a month and a half because of their refusal to work collaboratively.

Colleagues, I don’t have time to go through all the examples of this government’s incompetence, because I am scheduled to retire in a few more years; we would run out of time before I got to the end of the list. But suffice it to say that all through this pandemic we have had to fight with this government for accountability, transparency and reasonable time frames to consider legislation it wanted passed.

That brings us to the legislation before us today. Bill C-12 is the government’s fix for a problem they created almost two years ago when they introduced the CERB program. Seniors who qualified for CERB payments would find these benefits being included in the calculation of their income, which would impact their eligibility for the Guaranteed Income Supplement, or GIS.

In the Economic and Fiscal Update tabled in Parliament on December 14 last year, the government reported that approximately 204,000 seniors ended up having their GIS benefits cut for a cumulative total of $742.4 million. This comes out to an average loss of about $3,639 a year, or $303 per month.

Colleagues, I want to underscore that the GIS is intended to help low-income seniors make ends meet. A single senior qualifies for GIS if they earn less than $19,464 per year. In other words, they are trying to live on only $1,622 per month, which I think most of us can appreciate is next to impossible.

But remember, this is the upper threshold, which means many GIS recipients live on even less. You can quickly see how a loss of $303 per month would be a crushing loss of income for many seniors.

Now in fairness, this was the very beginning of the pandemic when we were all scrambling to deal with a very uncertain situation. The bill passed through the House in one day and the Senate the next day. There was an urgent need to reassure Canadians that there would be government support available for those who needed it throughout the pandemic. It was not a time to delay legislation in order to get things perfect.

That, colleagues, was almost two years ago. As early as May 12, 2020, the government acknowledged that these benefits were going to cause a problem for Guaranteed Income Supplement, or GIS, recipients. The benefits would be included in the calculation of their annual income, which would impact their eligibility for GIS.

In a briefing document from members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, the Minister of Seniors at the time noted the following:

The Canada Emergency Response Benefit is intended to replace income that has been lost due to COVID-19. It is considered to be taxable income and must be considered when determining entitlement to the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) and the Allowances.

This being said, this will not affect the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) and the Allowances for about a year. Income received from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit in 2020 will only affect GIS and Allowances benefit amounts beginning in July 2021, as those benefits will be based on 2020 income.

So they knew the problem was coming in May 2020. They knew well ahead that it would hit the pocketbooks of seniors in July 2021, and yet they did nothing about it until February 2022.

February 2022 was 23 months after the CERB program was created. It was 20 months since the government admitted that these benefits were going to diminish the income of hundreds of thousands of seniors receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement and nothing was done to address this shortcoming until the government tabled Bill C-12 in the other place on February 8.

Still, then, they didn’t move the bill to second reading for another seven days on February 15.

Then, before the bill even got to second reading, the government moved a programming motion in the House to shut down debate and deemed the bill referred to Committee of the Whole, considered in committee, reported without amendment, concurred at report stage, read a third time and passed. In other words, they just waved the bill through.

Then once the bill was headed our way, Senator Gold, our leader here, asked if we could shorten our speeches and maybe just have the sponsor and the critics speak so we could rush it through this chamber as well.

I found this curious at first, because the bill has nothing to do with getting the $742 million back into the hands of seniors. That allocation will reimburse seniors for money clawed back from them during the July 2020 to June 2021 GIS program year and does not require additional statutory approval.

Yes, senators, you heard right. The $742 million that will be paid out to seniors to reimburse them for GIS clawbacks can be disbursed to seniors with no additional approval by Parliament other than passing the usual interim supply bill that will come to us shortly. This expenditure is already authorized under section 7 of the Department of Employment and Social Development Act which reads:

The Minister may, in exercising the powers and performing the duties and functions assigned by this Act, establish and implement programs designed to support projects or other activities that contribute to the development of the human resources of Canada and the skills of Canadians, to the social development of Canada or to service delivery to the public, and the Minister may make grants and contributions in support of the programs.

If Bill C-12 contains no actual money for seniors and will not change any GIS payments before July of 2022, then why would the government be ramming this bill through the legislative process? The reason we were given was that it is imperative that this bill be passed by March 4 because the Canada Revenue Agency needs to make updates to its programming, which must be completed before that date. If the bill is not passed by March 4, then CRA will not have the legislative authority to make the necessary changes and the window to implement these changes for the next GIS benefit will close. This means seniors would have to endure another year of their GIS benefits being clawed back.

Colleagues, this is unbelievable. For almost two years, the government watched a train wreck approaching in slow motion. They saw it coming as early as May 2020 and yet did not bother to act until now. Now, just before the moment of impact, they are running around flailing their arms in desperation because we have an urgent situation on our hands. We, senators, are compelled to comply with their now-urgent timetable in order to protect seniors from the impact of this government’s incompetence and ambivalence.

Colleagues, as I said earlier, our caucus supports this initiative. It passed unanimously in the House of Commons, and I expect we may see the same outcome in this chamber. However, this support should not be conflated with confidence in the government. For seniors in general, this government is a disaster. Inflation is eating away their purchasing power while low interest rates pushed by the Minister of Finance are preventing seniors from getting a return on their investment that matches the inflation. Each year, seniors get further behind thanks to Justin Trudeau’s reckless policies.

This is regrettable, colleagues, and before you write that off as a partisan viewpoint, I wish to point out that it is being shared by increasing numbers of Canadians, including prominent Liberals. Just two days ago, Stephen LeDrew, the longest-serving president of the Liberal Party of Canada, wrote the following:

The Canada that Canadians now view every day is not the sensible, reasonable, and generous society that Canadians of all stripes have built up over many generations.

It has become polarized, nasty and barely recognizable.

Just listen to people talking in stores, on the street, and in meeting places.

Just walk or drive through cities and villages and the countryside, and see the Canadian flags — paired with signs expressing vehement disapproval of our federal government. Loyal Canadians are fed up with their federal government.

And one person is responsible for this — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

He has drastically altered Canadian institutions and norms so considerably that usually calm people are raising their voices in protest.

The core of the protestors in Ottawa and other Canadian centres were angry not only about government heavy-handedness in its pandemic policies, but also the changes being brought about by Trudeau.

He has cheapened public discourse and public life.

He talks so high-minded, yet has a lifelong history of deplorable acts.

He has arbitrarily ruined the lives of many other people who have been supposedly guilty of far less egregious acts than have been proven by photographs against him — perhaps to deflect his own guilt?

Does “do as I say, not as I do” strike home? How about “one standard for the masses, and another for the elites like me?”

His intolerance, and high-handed and ill-founded rectitude has led many to regard the government with disdain, and doubt its ability to get things right.

Colleagues, Mr. LeDrew goes on, but I think I have read enough for you to understand his message. This government does not seem to have the ability to get things right, and the fact that this bill is before us today at the eleventh hour is just one more example of this.

I support this bill. I support it going to committee, but I reject the government’s incompetent, cavalier approach to enacting public policy and I hope that all honourable senators will as well. Thank you.

Senator Plett: Sure.

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