- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sarnia—Lambton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $118,419.33
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today and announce the passing in the Senate of my second private member's bill, Bill C-228, on pension protection.
This bill will ensure that pensioners who have worked their whole lives for a company will receive the pension benefit they are due. This is accomplished by providing transparency to know which funds are insolvent, providing a mechanism to transfer funds to make them solvent and, in the case of bankruptcy, putting pensions in priority ahead of creditors.
There have been many members of all parties in the House and the Senate who have been trying to pass such a bill for two decades. I want to thank all of my colleagues for their help with this. This is a great day for Canadian pensioners. No longer will we see companies go out of business and leave those who have worked hard their whole lives without any pension or with only part of a pension.
Thanks go to everyone in the House and the Senate who supported the bill. It is a great day for Canadian pensioners.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here at this, the final reading of this bill, before the vote tomorrow and hopefully the bill's going on to the Senate.
It has been a long journey. Over the last at least 10 years, possibly longer, there have been numerous efforts to bring forward bills to get the pension protection Canadians deserve.
Basically, when I looked at the work that had been done, in every one of them there was something that not everyone could agree on, so I cherry-picked from all the different ideas that people could agree on and said, “Let us at least do something. Let us move in the direction of good.”
That is how Bill C-228 came into being. Previously, there was a bill, Bill C-253 in the last parliamentary session, which made it to the industry committee. It was on the priority of pensions.
This bill would do three things.
It would table a report in the House on the solvency of pension funds, so we can have greater transparency and know which funds are in trouble.
It would create a mechanism for us to transfer funds into an insolvent fund from elsewhere in the business, with no tax implication, so we can fix the problem before it becomes a difficulty for the pensioner.
Then, in the event of a bankruptcy, we would pay out pensions in priority over secured creditors like large banks, preferred creditors, and unsecured creditors. That will put pensioners in a much better position. Pension funds will be solvent, in general, and when there is a bankruptcy, large creditors are way more likely to be able to survive one company's going bankrupt than an individual who has paid into their pension and is counting on it for their retirement.
The bill has had much study. It has heard input from all kinds of stakeholders, and we are here today with what I think is a really good balance of all the rights of the pensioners and those of the suppliers. I think we have a very acceptable balance.
I want to thank a number of people, the member for Elmwood—Transcona, the member for Manicouagan and the member for Joliette, as well as all the finance committee members. There have been numerous people who have helped this bill along, provided their input and provided suggestions to improve it. I want to thank the member for La Prairie, who traded his private member's spot for today in order to move this up quickly and get it over to the Senate.
It just shows that there is broad support for the bill. When we look at the concerns that were raised about the bill, there was one amendment that was made at committee to include severance pay and termination pay in the priority. I supported that. I said I supported it at second reading, but it was ruled out of scope by the Chair and eventually back in the House, where the Liberals wanted the Speaker to rule on it. I think the Speaker was correct in saying that committees do not have the power to put things in that are out of scope, but then we brought a unanimous consent motion.
The member for Elmwood—Transcona brought the motion to have the House decide to put that amendment back in. Unfortunately, at that point, the Liberals did not support that amendment, and the motion did not receive unanimous consent.
That amendment is now out of the bill. That was the controversial part. I think we can agree that the rest is the right thing to do for Canadians.
I am happy to hear the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader say tonight that he has not yet made his decision on how he is going to vote. I would encourage him to vote yes to Bill C-228.
Now is the time, in this parliamentary session, for us, after 10 years of bringing various and sundry bills, to finally do the right thing for Canadians and protect people who have worked their whole lives and paid into a pension fund. It is time to give it the priority it needs to have.
I look forward to the vote tomorrow, and I look forward to having all parties in the House support Bill C-228.
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moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.
She said: Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-228, today at third reading. It was successfully passed as amended at the finance committee. Bill C-228 is centred on pension protection, working to prevent the loss of pensions for employees whose companies have declared bankruptcy.
Canadians deserve to know that the contributions they have made their whole lives will result in a secure financial future for themselves and their families, but the last few years have shown us that security can disappear in a moment. My bill would remedy this issue.
The bill would do three things. First, it would require that an annual report on the solvency of pension funds be tabled here in the House of Commons for greater transparency and oversight. Second, it would provide a mechanism to transfer funds into a pension fund to restore it to solvency. Finally, in the case of bankruptcy, pensions would be paid out ahead of large creditors and executive bonuses. The acceptance so far by this Parliament and the good work that has been done on the bill by all parties show that there is a common spirit and desire to improve pension security for Canadians. For that, the House has my sincere thanks.
Over the last 10 years, efforts by many parties and senators have been put forward to introduce bills to improve pension protection in Canada. I cherry-picked from all the ideas that were previously supported in the House and put them together in Bill C-228. Learning from both the numerous cases of company collapse and the various pension protection bills that came before to improve pension protection in a way we can all live with is my goal here today.
To put things in context, I want to point out that there have been far too many cases of businesses that have declared bankruptcy to the great detriment of their own employees.
Nortel Networks declared bankruptcy in 2009, leaving 200,000 Canadians to fend for themselves when it came to their pensions. An article published in the Financial Post in 2016 entitled “The big lesson from Nortel Networks: Pension plans aren't a guarantee” gave a detailed account of the battle waged by these employees as they tried to recover even part of their share of Nortel's assets, which were estimated at $7.3 billion. Legal and consulting fees totalled over $1.9 billion, which further reduced the amount these former employees were seeking.
According to CBC, at the end of 2016, former Nortel employees were pleased with the agreement they reached under which they would get a payout of 40¢ on the dollar. That was an improvement over the 10¢ on the dollar they were initially offered.
However, in 2020, the employees lost out again when the Ontario pension benefits guarantee fund managed to reclaim some $200 million from monies allocated to pensioners in Nortel's bankruptcy proceedings.
In all, the whole mess with Nortel turned into a more than 11-year battle for former employees who failed several times while simply trying to obtain the financial security to which they were entitled. That is just one example.
Sears Canada is another infamous case and perhaps one of the most well known. Between 2005 and 2013, Sears Canada paid more than $3 billion in dividends to shareholders, even as it was operating at a loss and its pension plan was underfunded by about $133 million. In 2017, Sears Canada declared bankruptcy after attempting to restructure. During the restructuring, Sears Canada faced heavy criticism for giving retention bonuses to 43 executives and senior managers, but it did not plan to offer severance to laid-off employees. Allegedly, the bonuses were intended to maintain the morale of senior staff at the cost of providing necessary funds for the company's pension plan, leaving more than 17,000 pensioners cheated of their full pensions.
Sears pensioners learned their pensions were going to be cut by 30%. Seventy-two-year-old Ron Husk of Mount Pearl, Newfoundland, told the CBC that the cut caused his monthly pension payment to drop by $450. Many said they would have to go back to work in sales, in their seventies. Pensioners in Ontario fared marginally better because of the provincial mechanism that protects the first $1,500 of a pensioner's payment, but it made little difference overall. In today's era of extreme inflation, it is helping even less.
Looking back further, when the T. Eaton Company folded in 1999, the vast majority of its 24,500 employees were terminated without being paid termination pay and severance pay, as well as other amounts owed to them. All employee and retiree health and other benefits were cancelled. In the end, the liquidator released payments to employees and retirees of just 53.7 cents on the dollar. There are several other noted cases where courts have ruled in favour of creditors and lenders over pensioners, including Indalex, Stelco and Grant Forest Products among others.
In the Indalex case, Indalex Limited obtained creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, also known as the CCAA. The court authorized Indalex to obtain debtor in possession, or DIP, financing, which would provide the company with loans to continue operating its businesses during the restructuring period. These DIP lenders had superior priority over the existing debt, equity and other claims.
At a hearing for approval of this motion in 2008, two groups of pension claimants opposed this distribution, asserting that the assets equal to the funding deficiencies in the two defined-benefit pension plans administered by Indalex were deemed to be held in trust and should be given to the pension plans in priority over the DIP lenders. The CCAA court ruled in favour of the DIP lenders, not the pensioners. This decision was upheld and became a precedent for the Grant Forest Products case. Sadly, many other examples of workers who did not receive their full pensions exist.
There is no doubt that this has been a problem for a long time. The government needs to intervene by taking stringent measures to rectify this and protect Canadian workers.
I want to acknowledge the contribution of some of my House of Commons colleagues. Many MPs from all parties have come to see me to propose bills on this same topic.
Currently there is a requirement for an annual report on the solvency of a fund, but it goes to the superintendent of finance, and it is not clear what, if any, actions are taken. In fact from 2003 to 2020, there is evidence that companies continued to have insolvent pension funds. My bill would require this report to be tabled here for greater transparency and oversight. Currently the average federally managed fund is at 109% solvency, so it is a good time to implement the measures of this bill.
The second part of the bill is to allow companies with insolvent pension funds to transfer additional funds from other assets in the business into the pension fund, without tax implications, to make it solvent.
In October 2017 and again in 2020, the Bloc member for Manicouagan introduced her private member's bill, Bill C-253, which would amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the CCAA. The bill would provide priority status for pensions in the event of bankruptcy proceedings. This bill ultimately made it to committee, but died on the Order Paper when the Liberals called the election. I have incorporated her bill here with some suggestions brought forward.
There was concern that implementing an immediate priority for pensions could have unintended consequences. The suggestion was to have the coming into force of the reporting on the insolvency of funds to happen immediately, along with a mechanism to top up the fund and restore it to solvency. However, it was recommended to have several years for companies to get their funds in order before implementing the priority part.
Five years was the period suggested originally in the bill, but there were stakeholders who preferred to see it be three years. At committee, we were able to come to a compromise of four years for the coming into force of the priority portion of the bill. I want to also acknowledge that the Liberal member for Whitby sponsored an e-petition on pension protection, supporting this very issue.
My bill has been reviewed by a variety of stakeholders, from the Canadian Labour Congress to financial institutions and many pension associations nationally, including the Canadian Federation of Pensioners and the Canadian Association of Retired Persons.
Bill VanGorder, the chief operating officer of CARP, offered this quote:
Most older Canadians have fixed incomes but face rising costs, growing inflation, an unpredictable economy and retirement savings that suffer as a result. The Canadian Association of Retired Persons...believes it is vital that the Federal Government protect pensioners by giving them “priority” status and creates a pension insurance program that insures 100% of pension liabilities. This proposal would go a long way in making that happen.
Some banks and large financial institutions have expressed their reluctance to me. They are concerned that, if pensioners are given priority, companies with insolvent funds will have to pay higher interest rates to obtain credit and will be less likely to apply for credit.
This is part of the reason why the implementation schedule should allow time for companies with insolvent funds to get their finances in order. I would like to point out that, if a company cannot restore the solvency of its fund within four years, it should indeed pay a higher interest rate to obtain credit because it really does present a higher risk.
In summary, this means reporting to Parliament on the solvency of funds for greater transparency so we can ensure actions are being taken to protect pensions, creating a mechanism to top up the funds to restore solvency, and, in the event of bankruptcy, ensuring that people who have worked their whole lives receive the pension they were promised.
An amendment was brought forward by the member for Elmwood—Transcona to include severance and termination pay at the same priority as pensions, ahead of secured creditors, and it was presented at finance committee. Indeed, discussions were held with all parties regarding this, and at second reading I said I would support this measure.
However, it was ruled out of scope by the clerk and the chair of the finance committee. The committee then voted in the majority to overturn the ruling of the chair and add this amendment to the bill.
Subsequently, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader asked for a Speaker's ruling to eliminate the amendment since it was out of scope. The Speaker did rule it out of scope, and that amendment does not appear in the bill.
I respect the decision of the Speaker, although I am disappointed that this addition did not go forward, since I think people should receive their severance in the case of bankruptcy. However, with the priority falling after secured creditors, preferred creditors and unsecured creditors, it is unlikely they will get it, which contravenes the law in many provinces. In Ontario, for example, the law is that people get a minimum of one week of salary for every year of service.
Other amendments at committee included the deletion of clause 6, which eliminated a mechanism to get third party insurance on the insolvent portion of a pension fund. No one seemed to think this was as brilliant an idea as I originally thought. Clause 7 was also deleted to clean up sections 8.1 and 8.2, which were holdovers from previous legislation.
I want to thank everyone who helped to improve my bill at committee, and for passing it there expediently to bring it to this stage.
In summary, I am now asking all members of the House and the Senate to work to get this bill over the finish line and truly improve pension security for Canadians. We are so close. Let this 44th Parliament be the one to ensure that Canadians are able to live with dignity into their golden years.
Our continued efforts will ensure that Canadians are able to support themselves and their families with the pensions they have worked over a lifetime to earn. Please vote to support Bill C-228.
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Madam Speaker, it is very encouraging to hear all parties in the House agree that this bill needs to go to committee. Over the last 10 years, there have been multiple attempts by multiple parties to address the issue of pension protection in Canada. We have seen countless Canadians impacted: They have not received their severance or have received pennies on the dollar.
Bill C-228 would do three things. First, it would allow the annual report on the solvency of funds to be tabled here in the House so that it is a matter of public record and we know which funds are in trouble. Second, it would provide a mechanism to transfer money into those funds without tax implications to top them up and restore them to solvency. That is really where we want to be. Third, in the case of bankruptcy, the bill would make pensions a priority, after source deductions and taxes and suppliers take back their goods, but before large creditors and unsecured creditors. That is where we have put the priority for pensioners to receive their due.
I thank the member for Manicouagan and the member for Elmwood—Transcona for the many discussions we have had on things we need to do to the bill to try to address concerns. I also thank the members who have spoken tonight: the member for Kingston and the Islands, members from the Bloc, my colleague from Hastings—Lennox and Addington and even the member for Whitby, who presented a petition in the House on pension protection. This just shows that the time is right for us to work together and get this right at committee.
One thing we are going to be working on and talking about at committee is cleaning up some of the clauses. There were a number of bills and each one of them had something in it that everybody did not like. When we were cleaning up some of the things we did not like in the previous bill, Bill C-405, a couple of clauses got left behind, so we got rid of them.
The insurance idea is something people want to talk about at committee. Some people like that idea and some people do not. The NDP also correctly raised the point that pensions are not the only consideration; severance pay is too. It is something people have not received when companies are in bad shape. That should go in, with the same priority as pensions. I agree with that.
In trying to make sure that we do not get the unintended consequences that the member for Kingston and the Islands was talking about, one thing of concern is whether or not businesses can get adequate credit. We have allowed a different coming-into-force time. The reporting and topping up of funds would be immediate, but we would give a number of years before the priority part of this bill comes into force. That would allow businesses time to get their house in order, and I would argue that if they cannot get their act together, they are a greater financial risk, so they should pay the associated consequences for that.
I am happy to say that there is support in the Senate. If the bill makes it out of committee and goes to the other place, there is support from multiple parties in the Senate, from Senators Plett, Yussuff and Dalphond. There is also huge stakeholder support across the country. Letters have gone out everywhere from Mike Powell with the Canadian Federation of Pensioners, CARP and the number of other stakeholders that have come forward.
I am encouraged by what I have heard today. I know this is what Canadians want us to do. They want us to work together, have the discussions and work collaboratively. As the twice-named most collegial parliamentarian, it is my pleasure to work together across the aisles. This is important for seniors in our country and it is important for people who work their whole lives. We can do something great in this moment, so I encourage all members of the House to support Bill C-228 and send it to committee. Let us work together and get this done for Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Whitby for putting forward his e-petition, which I encourage all Canadians to sign. I think this is an issue that everyone in this chamber and all Canadians are concerned with.
In terms of the priority, there has been discussion about “super priority” and where it should go on the list. When we look at all of the things that need to be paid out from the beginning, we see that source deductions, the CPP, things that were owed already and taxes that were due all need to be paid. Then we think about suppliers, many of which are small businesses that need to be able to get back their goods that they have given and, arguably, are not going to be paid for. That is important. There are then a number of salaries that need to be paid to people who have worked their time. They need to receive those.
However, after that the argument is that large creditors could actually withstand the failure of a company much better than an individual who was counting on that pension for their whole financial security for their future. That is why we would put individual pensions ahead of secured and unsecured creditors: they would be further up in the list.
These are the discussions we are going to have at committee, and I look forward to that.
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moved that Bill C-228, An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act and the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, be read a second time and referred to a committee.
She said: Madam Speaker, today is April Fool's Day, so I could not start this speech without saying that one would have to be a fool not to support my private member's bill.
My private member's bill is centred on pension protection and working to prevent the loss of pensions for employees whose companies have declared bankruptcy. Canadians deserve to know that the contributions they have made over their whole lives will result in a secure financial future for themselves and for their families. However, the last few years have shown us that security can disappear in a moment. We need to do better for Canadians.
My bill would remedy this issue. It would do three things. First, it would require that an annual report on the solvency of pension funds be tabled here in the House of Commons for greater transparency and oversight.
Second, it would provide a mechanism to transfer funds into a pension fund to restore it to solvency or to ensure the insolvent portion until the funds could be restored.
Finally, in the case of bankruptcy, pensions would be paid out ahead of large creditors and executive bonuses.
To put things in context, I want to point out that there have been far too many cases of businesses that have declared bankruptcy to the great detriment of their own employees.
Nortel Networks declared bankruptcy in 2009, leaving 200,000 Canadians to fend for themselves when it came to their pensions. An article published in the Financial Post in 2016 entitled “The big lesson from Nortel Networks: Pension plans aren't a guarantee” gave a detailed account of the battle waged by these employees as they tried to recover even part of their share of Nortel's assets, which were estimated at $7.3 billion. Legal and consulting fees totalled over $1.9 billion, which further reduced the amount these former employees were seeking.
According to CBC, at the end of 2016, former Nortel employees were pleased with the agreement they reached under which they would get a payout of 40¢ on the dollar. That was an improvement over the 10¢ on the dollar they were initially offered.
However, in 2020, the employees lost out again when the Ontario pension benefits guarantee fund managed to reclaim some $200 million from monies allocated to pensioners in Nortel's bankruptcy proceedings.
In all, the whole mess with Nortel turned into a more than 11-year battle for former employees who failed several times while simply trying to obtain the financial security to which they were entitled. That is just one example.
Sears Canada is another infamous case, perhaps one of the most well known. Between 2005 and 2013, Sears Canada paid more than $3 billion in dividends to shareholders, even as it was operating at a loss and its pension plan was underfunded by about $133 million.
In 2017, Sears Canada declared bankruptcy after attempting to restructure. During that restructuring, Sears Canada faced heavy criticism for giving retention bonuses to 43 executives and senior managers, when it did not plan to offer severance to laid-off employees. Allegedly, the bonuses were intended to maintain the morale of senior staff at the cost of providing the necessary funds to the company's pension plan, leaving more than 17,000 pensioners cheated of their full pensions.
Sears pensioners learned that their payments were going to be cut by 30%. Of Mount Pearl, Newfoundland, 72-year old Ron Husk told the CBC that the cut caused his monthly pension payment to drop by $450. Many said they would have to go back to work in sales in their seventies. Pensioners in Ontario fared marginally better because of the provincial mechanism that protects the first $1,500 of a pensioner's payments, but it made little difference overall and in today's era of extreme inflation it is helping even less.
Looking back further, when the Eaton company folded in 1999, the vast majority of its 24,500 employees were terminated without being paid termination pay, severance pay and other amounts owed to them. All employee and retiree health and other benefits were cancelled. In the end, the liquidator released payments to employees and retirees of just 53.7¢ on the dollar.
There are several other noted cases in which courts have ruled in the favour of creditors and lenders over pensioners, including Indalex, Stelco and Grant Forest Products, among others. In the Indalex case, Indalex Limited obtained creditor protection under the Companies' Creditor Arrangement Act, known as the CCWA. The court authorized Indalex to obtain debtor in possession, or DIP, financing, which would provide the company with loans to allow it to continue operating its business during the restructuring period. These DIP lenders had superpriority over the existing debt equity and other claims.
At a hearing for the approval of this motion in 2008, two groups of pension claimants opposed the distribution, asserting that assets equal to the funding deficiencies in two defined benefit pension plans administered by Indalex were deemed to be held in trust and should be given to the pension plan in priority over the DIP lender. The CCWA court ruled in favour of the DIP lender, not the pensioners. This decision was upheld and became a precedent for the Grant Forest Products case.
Sadly, many other examples of workers who did not receive their full pensions exist.
There is no doubt that this has been a problem for a long time. The government needs to intervene by taking stringent measures to rectify this and protect Canadian workers. I want to acknowledge the contribution of some of my colleagues in the House. Many MPs from all parties came to see me to present bills on this same topic.
In 2018, my colleague, the member for Durham, introduced Bill C‑405 on pension benefits standards in order to authorize the administrator of an underfunded pension plan, in certain situations, to amend the plan or to transfer or permit the transfer of any part of the assets or liabilities of the pension plan to another pension plan. This bill did not receive enough support, because changing the type of pension or the benefit amount means breaching the contract signed by employees who worked for a company for a certain number of years and thought they would receive a certain pension.
His bill also called for the tabling of an annual report in Parliament respecting the solvency of pension plans, which I thought was a useful and brilliant provision.
Currently, there is a requirement for an annual report on the solvency of a fund, but it goes to the superintendent of finance and what, if any, actions are taken is not clear. In fact, there is evidence, with companies like Air Canada, that pension fund insolvency has been allowed to continue for far too many years. My bill would require this report to be tabled here, for greater transparency and oversight.
In October 2017 and again in 2020, the Bloc member for Manicouagan introduced a private member's bill, Bill C-253, which would have amended the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the CCAA. The bill would have provided priority status for pensions in the event of bankruptcy proceedings. It ultimately made it to committee but died on the Order Paper when the Liberals called the election. I have incorporated her bill here with some suggestions that were brought forward.
There was concern that implementing an immediate priority for pensions could have unintended consequences. The suggestion was to have the coming into force of the reporting on the insolvency of funds to happen immediately, along with the mechanism to top up the fund to restore it to solvency. It was recommended to have several years of time for companies to get their funds in order before implementing the priority part. Five years was suggested in the bill, but there are stakeholders who would prefer to see it at three years. I am flexible about this, and these are exactly the types of conversations that need to happen when the bill goes to committee.
Most recently, the NDP member for Elmwood—Transcona reintroduced work first put forward by former MP Scott Duvall. What was originally Bill C-259 in 2020 would amend the act to ensure that claims in respect of unfunded liabilities or solvency deficiencies of a pension plan are accorded priority in the event of bankruptcy proceedings. It would also provide that an employer had to maintain group insurance plans that provide benefits to or in respect of its employees or former employees. This was the part of the bill that was a sticking point. This bill would also amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act to empower the superintendent of financial institutions to determine that the funding of a pension plan is impaired or that the pension plan administrator is at risk, and to set out measures to be taken by the employer in respect of the funding of the plan in such cases.
What I did was cherry-pick from all of the ideas that were previously supported by the House and put them all together in Bill C-228. Learning from both the numerous cases of company collapse and the various pension protection bills that came before to improve pension protection in a way we can all agree on is my goal here today. I also want to acknowledge that the Liberal member for Whitby is sponsoring e-petition 3893 on pension protections, supporting this very issue.
My bill has been reviewed by a variety of stakeholders, including the Canadian Federation of Pensioners and the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. Bill VanGorder, the chief operating officer of CARP, offered this quote:
Most older Canadians have fixed incomes but face rising costs, growing inflation, an unpredictable economy and retirement savings that suffer as a result. The Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) believes it is vital that the Federal Government protect pensioners by giving them ‘priority’ status and creates a pension insurance program that insures 100% of pension liabilities. This proposal would go a long way in making that happen.
Some banks and large financial institutions have expressed their reluctance. They are concerned that if pensioners are given priority, companies with insolvent funds will have to pay higher interest rates to obtain credit and will be less likely to apply for credit.
This is part of the reason why the timing of the implementation should allow time for companies with insolvent funds to get their finances in order.
I would like to point out that if a company cannot restore the solvency of its fund after a period of five years, it should indeed pay a higher interest rate to obtain credit, because it really does present a higher risk.
The Canadian Labour Congress would like unions to have a say in how priorities are set when it comes to pensions.
If we can agree on the priority status and include that in the legislation, so that it is not subject to whim or pressure, I think that would strengthen pension protection.
In summary, this is reporting to Parliament on the solvency of funds for greater transparency so that we can ensure actions are being taken to protect pensions; creating a mechanism to top up the funds to restore solvency; and, in the event of bankruptcy, ensuring that people who have worked their whole lives receive the pensions they were promised.
The Library of Parliament has created an excellent table from the three-inch-thick Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to show where I am suggesting pensions go in the priority of discussion. They would come after source deductions for CPP, QPP and EI and taxes due; after suppliers take back their goods delivered within a month of bankruptcy; after salaries up to $2,000 and the associated contributions; and before secured claims, preferred claims and unsecured claims.
Many members of the House in all parties have indicated their support for getting this bill to committee. I am open to consideration of other suggestions on how we can work to improve this bill to provide a successful outcome for Canadians, and I look forward to the industry committee's review of the bill.
I want to thank my colleagues for all their support in drafting this bill, and the MPs for Durham, Manicouagan and Elmwood—Transcona for their efforts to enhance pension protection. I would also like to thank Mr. VanGorder for his support and Mr. Mike Powell, the president of the Canadian Federation of Pensioners, for his invaluable help on this bill.
Finally, I want to end with a call to action. For many years, the House and the Senate have tried to address this issue. We have the opportunity now, as members of Parliament in difficult times, to come together and ensure that Canadians no longer find their pensions and retirement in jeopardy. We can work together to ensure that Canadians are able to live in dignity in their golden years, able to support themselves and their families with their hard-earned pensions.
Let us show Canadians that we have their interests at heart and support Bill C-228.
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Mr. Speaker, I am definitely always happy to talk about my private member's bill. The problem is that we have seen seniors work their whole lives and expect to have a pension to retire on, and then the company goes bankrupt, pays big bonuses out to their executives and leaves the seniors with either no pension or pennies on the dollar.
What got me going on this was a neighbour of mine, who worked for Sears for 30 years and ended up getting 70 cents on the dollar after 30 years of working. My bill is going to keep that from happening, first of all by giving transparency to see whether there is solvency in the fund; second, by creating a mechanism to top up that fund if it is not solvent; and third, by making sure that if companies do go bankrupt, the people who have worked all their lives and paid into their pensions receive their pensions before big bonuses are paid out or large corporations are paid out.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a great question.
Absolutely, single senior women are the poorest. It is important to have a policy that recognizes that more money is needed for senior women living in poverty, because they are struggling to put a roof over their heads.
More funding may be needed and pensions may have to increase to ensure that women can be properly housed.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to talk about one of my favourite topics, seniors, and I have now become one.
I think it is really important that we have this discussion today. This is an opportunity for us to pull what I would call an ugly scab off of the issue of affordability for seniors, especially those living on a fixed income. This is a wound that has been festering for some time, and I want to start off by taking a look at the actual numbers and the situation that many Canadians are finding themselves in.
There are single seniors living on a fixed income getting OAS, GIS and CPP. For those who would get OAS, depending on the work that they did in their career, they might get as much as $7,700 a year. They might get, from GIS, if they received the maximum, about $11,500. If they had worked a long time and they had maximized their CPP, they might be getting around $9800.
What that works out to every month is somewhere between $2000 and $2400, depending on where they are on the scale. That is it.
These are people, if they are getting GIS, that do not have huge nest eggs. They do not have huge savings to draw upon to get them out of a bad situation. Today, the folks who define the Canadian poverty line define that line as 50% of the median income. For a single person, they are saying anybody who makes less than $3600 a month is actually living at or below the poverty line. All of these seniors we are talking about are already living below the poverty line, after they have worked their whole lives and after they have built the nation.
All this rhetoric coming from the other side is ironic. Even in the 2020 throne speech, we heard the words, “Elders deserve to be safe, respected and live in dignity.” Well, if they deserve to be respected, and if they deserve to live in dignity, that is certainly not what we are seeing today.
I want to start by describing the situation before the pandemic. I will then talk about what happened during the pandemic and where the need for Bill C-12 comes from. I want to then talk about the lack of government action when all of these issues were being raised, and make a few comments to follow up based on that.
Initially during the pandemic, recognizing that people were struggling and many people had lost their jobs, the government did make an effort and the Conservatives did support many programs to replace the income that people had been making.
Sadly, many of the people we are talking about, who are on fixed incomes, had to go out and take on other jobs just to make ends meet, just to heat their homes and have groceries on the table. In my view, that is totally unacceptable for the seniors who built the country. However, that was the reality.
What did the Liberals do during the pandemic? They decided to increase the carbon tax twice. Not just once, but twice. This put up the cost of groceries, home heating and basically all goods. At the same time, we have seen inflation increasing to where we are today at nearly 5%. People on a fixed income have zero ability to adapt to that.
We know that the lack of action we have seen in the affordable housing crisis has also just gotten worse during this pandemic. Even in a riding like mine, which is not a metropolitan riding, a person cannot find something to rent for less than $1000 a month. If someone is on a fixed income, and they are only getting $2000 a month, there will not be a lot left over for food, groceries and heating.
To get seniors living at what we are calling the poverty line might take as much as $1000 or $1500 a month, depending on the location they are living in. The government is great to talk about the increases they have made to GIS in the past that raised them $60 a month. However, at the same time, Kathleen Wynne and the Ontario Liberals raised electricity prices, so people were paying $130 more a month. They were even further behind. That is not the kind of action we need from government.
Then we saw the government come with a plan to give seniors, but only those over the age of 75, a one-time payment of $500 in August, just as it was calling an election, to remind those seniors over the age of 75 to not forget about it. Those between the ages of 65 and 75 who were living on a fixed income got nothing. As well, the government is promising a raise for those over the age of 75 for the summer of 2022.
I am happy to see the mandate letter of the minister now includes all seniors over 65. What she will actually do is another story, because we always see a lot of talk and not much action. I do not know why those aged 65 to 75 were excluded. I heard all the time at the doors in my riding about how they were finding it just as tough to live as those over the age of 75.
If we keep in mind that these people do not have any other income to draw on, we can see the government was aware of the problem very early on. In March of 2020, at the start of the pandemic, I was already emailing the then minister of seniors to say that we had a problem. The people who took CERB who were also on GIS would have their GIS impacted the next year. This was raised in March of 2020. In March of 2020 the government was aware that it was a problem, and nothing was done at that time.
One of the issues I have with the government bringing this bill here today, and deciding that it needs to be rushed through, after over a year of inaction, is that there was a fix for these seniors who had their GIS reduced, who cannot pay their rent or buy food to eat. Some in my riding lost their homes and have become homeless, and they needed that money immediately.
The government had the ability to put the money in their accounts immediately. How do I know this? Let us think about it. The government knows who gets the GIS. It is deposited in the accounts of those seniors every month. It knows who got the CERB, because it deposited that into their accounts as well. It certainly knew how to put in that $500 “do not forget to vote for us” payment for the people over age 75 in August.
Therefore, it could have just as easily recognized the impact this was going to have, put that money into their accounts and reconciled it later. It did that with the 800,000 Canadians who received a benefit to which they were not entitled, and which it is now trying to reconcile.
With the hardships that Canadian have faced, these seniors who call my office are crying. They are losing their homes. They cannot afford to eat. Something has gone wrong, perhaps with their car, and they now have no ability and no mobility. It is unfortunate that the Liberals could not, at the very least, address the problem and then come back to fill in any gaps in the legislation. They have not had any issue in the past doing things through orders in council and using various tricks, which do not involve coming to Parliament, to get whatever it is they want to spend. However, when it comes to seniors, they just forgot about them.
After I flagged the problem in March, the minister said the government would deal with it. Then it paid out benefits to people who lived in other countries. It paid out benefits to people who were ineligible. When the new minister came in in October, I asked her if there was something that could be done about it, because I had people in my riding who were writing me stories that were enough to make one cry. I could certainly read out their testimonies.
In May of 2020, the Minister of Seniors was before the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and was given a prepared binder by the department officials. In that binder, under section 7.2, under the heading of “Questions and Answers: COVID‑19 Economic Response Plan”, the question in the book reads, “Will income from the Canadian emergency response benefit be used in the calculation of guaranteed income supplement benefits?” The answer was “It is considered to be taxable income and must be considered when determining entitlement to the guaranteed income supplement, GIS, and the allowances”. Therefore, the government actually knew then that the problem existed, but it has done nothing for a year, and here we are.
The Conservatives brought a very reasonable amendment. We understand, and we want to see seniors get their money. However, not to make this point too many times, the government could do that today if it really had the political will, but it does not. We said that we have to respect the parliamentary process. We see, too many times, the Liberals wanting to avoid parliamentary process and wanting to push things through the House. We see that they have already limited debate on the bill, as they do on many other bills, after saying they would never do that.
Here we are. We need time to debate the bill and time to amend it, because of some of the things that happened over the course of the pandemic where programs were put in place that had shortcomings, which were pointed out immediately and were never repaired. We can think of the many small businesses that were impacted at the beginning of the pandemic when they were not eligible if they were sole proprietorships. They were not eligible if the business had just started up and did not have a full year of revenue and business statements to show. There were quite a number of people who were impacted because the programs that were rolled out were flawed. Why were they flawed? It was because the Liberals tried to rush them through Parliament.
I would argue that it is worth taking some time, and I think the Conservatives brought quite a measured little amendment to this motion that would give us the time that we need to look into making sure that everything is as it should be. In our amendment, we are saying to send it to committee, get the Minister of Seniors there so that we can hear everything from her and her departmental officials, ask all the questions, identify those things that need to be repaired and fix them. We could then immediately do the clause-by-clause, make the amendments that need to be made, bring it back to the House and then get in the express lane and not use any amendments at report stage or anything like that but go right to third reading and off to the Senate.
Keep in mind that the Senate is not even sitting in the next week. We can say “emergency”, but due process is that it goes through the stages of this House and then it goes to the other place, which is not even sitting. We can hurry up here, but they will not be there to receive it and process it.
We need to correct the problem because seniors are already in a bad place. I talked about the small amount of money that seniors are making. I talked about how dire it is getting, and it is only going to get worse as we see the supply-chain issues that are currently being impacted by the trucker mandates and the lack of action on the part of the Prime Minister to address this.
As a sidebar, I think it is unbelievable that the Prime Minister has called for the Emergencies Act to be put in place when he was not even using the actions he already had the power to take in order to end the supply-chain issues that are driving up the cost of everything and making this problem even worse.
Seniors are going to have a very difficult time waiting another six months before they receive their payments, so I encourage the government to do what it can to make sure that seniors receive their payments as soon as possible after we have the discussion on the bill. At the same time, I must say that we have to look ahead to the future. We have one in six seniors in the country right now, and it will be one in four in just a few years. We cannot allow them to be this far away from living, at least, at the poverty line.
Some of the measures that can be taken would be to accelerate the OAS and GIS payments. I know the Bloc and the Conservatives supported a motion in the last Parliament that did not go ahead because of the present government. I encourage the government to try to get seniors back to where they need to be, and I am going to do my part.
There are seniors who thought they were going to be able to retire with a pension and are unfortunately not able to do that or have less pension than they expected because their employer went bankrupt. I am bringing a private member's bill forward, Bill C-228, the pension protection act, which would cause businesses to every year table a report on the solvency of their fund so that we have transparency to see whether those funds are in good shape. If they are not, it would provide a mechanism for funds to be transferred in without tax implications. Then, if the organization cannot transfer and top up the fund immediately, they would have the ability to get insurance while they are able to, over a series of years, restore the fund to solvency. In the case of bankruptcy, pensions would be paid out to seniors and they would be paid out before large bonuses to executives and large creditors.
This would solve the problems of many seniors, including those who have lost their employment due to the bankruptcies of Eatons, Sears, Algoma, Caterpillar, Nortel and numerous other companies that have left employees in that situation. We can see from the information I read at the beginning of my speech that if seniors have to rely on OAS, GIS and maybe CPP, they are still living below the level that Canadians would consider acceptable. We cannot have that for our seniors. It is very hard for our seniors when they see new people coming into the country who are receiving more money than they are making, when they helped build the country. I think we can agree that we want all Canadians to be living with a reasonable standard of living.
The last thing I am going to say on this topic of Bill C-12 is that I do need to commend the new Minister of Seniors for at least bringing the legislation forth in reasonable time. She is not the one who knew about it last year and did nothing, so at least we have the bill before us today. As has been said, the Conservatives will support this to go to committee, but we will have our eyes on the legislation to ensure it is solid and we are not going to see more loopholes that would cause further issues for our seniors.
At the same time, I could not get up and speak about seniors in this place without talking about some of the other advocacy I have done on behalf of seniors. As members know, I brought forward a palliative care bill in the first session of Parliament, and I would say there has never been more of a need to continue the work done on that. Now, with the pandemic, we have been distracted from that. I would encourage the government to come up with a plan to exit the pandemic and restore the economy, so that we can then start talking about some of the other issues that are facing seniors. They certainly need to have good options at end of life to get the dignity the throne speech indicated. They certainly need to be able to get the drugs and essential medicines they require.
Certainly, I want to see the government do something on that, but today the call is for the government to listen to the Conservatives and take our advice. Let us support the motion my colleague brought forward, which says, let us get this to committee, all sit down, roll up our sleeves, get the amendments that are needed and then get this done. Let us not make seniors wait until July 2022 to receive the payments they desperately need today in order to keep them from becoming, in some cases, homeless.
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