Colleen Beaumier

[Old Age Security Act, May 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am not really sure of the particulars of which the member speaks. If the Liberals did vote against that, they now have the opportunity to do the right thing and vote for my private member's bill.

[Old Age Security Act, May 11th, 2007]

moved that Bill C-362, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act (residency requirement), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, with me it is either feast or famine and today is a feast.

Today, I rise to speak in support of Bill C-362, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act (residency requirement). Introduced in the House on October 25, 2006, the intent of Bill C-362 is straightforward. It amends the Old Age Security Act to reduce from 10 years to 3 years the residency requirement for entitlement to old age security.

Nevertheless how straightforward the bill may be, it addresses and remedies a great injustice in Canada's social security system, an injustice which is presently causing great harm to seniors across Canada and to the families and communities to which they belong.

The bill deserves the support of each and every member of the House. It is my sincere hope we will set aside all partisan concerns and work together to improve the well-being of a great many seniors, their families and communities across all of Canada.

I want to begin today by identifying and clarifying the great injustice Bill C-362 is meant to address. Following that I will identify and discuss why I believe the bill warrants the support of every member of the House.

Presently the Old Age Security Act requires a person to reside in Canada for 10 years before she or he is entitled to receive old age security. Although the old age security program is intended to be universal and to act as the cornerstone of Canada's retirement income system for all Canadians, this residency requirement effectively excludes many seniors from its benefits.

Indeed, because of the 10 year residency requirement, it is not at all uncommon for a Canadian senior citizen to go entirely without the benefits of old age security for many years. Practically speaking, the residency requirement creates two different classes of senior citizens, those who qualify for old age security at 65 and those who do not simply because they have not yet lived in Canada for 10 years.

As a result, the residency requirement also creates two different classes of families and communities within Canada. There are those families and communities whose seniors receive the benefits and peace of mind of old age security at age 65 and those families and communities that do not because of the residency requirement.

In other words, the residency requirement also creates a distinct class of families and communities, those who are required to take on a burden of responsibility that other families in Canada are not expected to bear. The net result is the 10 year residency requirement for old age security treats a whole group of Canadians as second class citizens. This, I am sure we can all agree, is unacceptable.

It should also be noted that the 10 year residency requirement also adds insult to injury by targeting, inadvertently I think, some of the most economically vulnerable seniors in Canada.

As some member of the House well know, in some cases seniors can circumvent the 10 year residency requirement and qualify for old age security if they emigrated from countries that have signed reciprocal social security agreements with the Government of Canada. These agreements allow for the coordination of the two countries' social security programs, make the benefits portable between the two countries and normally exist because both countries provide social security plans with similar benefits.

As a result, in many cases, the very reason no reciprocal agreement exists between Canada and a particular country is simply because the other country is unwilling or unable to provide comparable social security for its citizens, including its seniors. This means those persons who may need old age security the most, because they emigrated from countries with little or no social security, must go without here in Canada even after they have become Canadian citizens. This I am also sure we can all agree is unacceptable.

To summarize, the injustice that Bill C-362 is intended to address is the brute fact that the 10 year residency requirement for old age security not only treats a great many Canadians as second class citizens, but it also denies benefits to some of those seniors most in need of assistance.

If we also recall that poverty is epidemic among our seniors, especially among women and new Canadians, there is only one sensible and decent conclusion to be drawn. The 10 year residency requirement is unjust, unacceptable and must be changed. That is exactly what Bill C-362 aims to do.

While I am friendly to the view that the residency requirement could be eliminated entirely, it is my feeling that a three year residency requirement is appropriate, meaningful and not at all arbitrary. Although none of us in the House can ever be sure of the original intentions of those legislators who proposed and accepted a 10 year residency requirement, it is easy to speculate that this requirement was intended to ensure old age security would only benefit those immigrants who were truly committed to remaining in Canada.

While I certainly agree that the decision to leave one's country of birth in itself is a good sign of one's desire and commitment to reside in Canada permanently, the three year residency requirement provides a sufficient safeguard against any potential abuse.

Moreover, to demand a residency requirement any longer than three years is unreasonable. After three years of residence, an immigrant is entitled to become a full citizen of Canada. If three years' residency is sufficient for citizenship, it is certainly sufficient to entitle that person to old age security.

Having identified the injustice that Bill C-362 is intended to address, and having justified why I think a three year residency requirement is appropriate, I want to conclude my remarks today by explaining why I think the bill deserves the support of each and every member of the House.

Ultimately, I believe Bill C-362 deserves the support of every member of the House as a simple matter of decency. However people may choose to make sense of the notion of decency, whether they prefer to talk of a principle of fairness, or equality of opportunity, or the equal dignity of all persons, the underlying sentiment remains the same. A person should not be made worse off than others arbitrarily and without just cause.

Unquestionably, the 10 year residency requirement arbitrarily prevents a great many seniors from receiving old age security benefits and this creates undue and unjust hardship for a great many seniors, their families and their communities. As far as I can tell, there is no good reason which justifies the imposition of this harm on so many Canadians.

The only truly decent thing to do is to reduce this residency requirement to three years, as my bill proposes.

Bill C-362 also deserves the support of every member of the House because, in supporting it, we can each acknowledge an honour the immeasurable contribution made each and every day by seniors across Canada, to our families, our communities and our country.

Seniors, thanks to their lifetime of experience, are able to provide support and guidance to all of us. Not only do seniors help us to remember and to understand our history, our values and our identity, they very often help alleviate the real pressures of raising a family in today's fast paced society.

There is, for example, no better child care than that provided by a loving grandparent. However, seniors will not be in any position to offer us guidance, wisdom and support if they are themselves trapped in abject poverty. By securing the economic security of all seniors, ultimately we do a service to all Canadians.

Bill C-362 also deserves the support of every member of the House because, in supporting it, we formally recognize that all Canadian seniors deserve to live their entire lives with a sense of dignity and self-respect. No person and certainly no member of the House would ever want to face a choice between abject poverty and a life of absolute dependence on family and friends.

By guaranteeing a certain basic level of support for all Canadian seniors, we guarantee a lifetime of dignity and self-respect for all Canadians. After all, all of us will one day ourselves be seniors, some sooner than others.

Finally, Bill C-362 deserves the support of every member of this House because I believe that Canadians all across the country want us to address the very real injustice faced by so many seniors, their families and their communities.

On the whole, Canadians are decent people without exception. Whenever possible we strive to do the right thing and to right wrongs whenever we encounter them. I think to even the most casual observer the injustice of an arbitrary 10-year residency requirement is a wrong that needs to be corrected. Indeed, since tabling this bill I have received a great many letters of support from persons and organizations all across Canada.

In closing, I want to remind the members of this House that Canada has been, remains and always will be a country of immigrants. Even today, Canada has one of the highest per capita rates of immigration in the world, with roughly 17% of our population foreign born and another 30% descended from earlier generations of non-British or non-French immigrants.

It also should not be forgotten that the British and the French at one time were themselves immigrants. Moreover, research indicates that within the next 20 years, immigration will account for all our net population and labour force growth in Canada. In my view and the view of a great many Canadians, every single one of our recent immigrants and future citizens deserves a social security net which is truly universal and which encompasses a person's entire life.

While it is certainly tempting to say that we need to provide this kind of social security as a necessary exercise in marketing, that is, we need to do it if Canada wants to attract and retain the best and the brightest immigrants, I think there is a deeper and much more meaningful motivation. We owe it to all Canadians as a matter of decency, the kind of heart-felt decency which motivates and unites every person in this great and caring country of ours.

[Committees of the House, May 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member can tell the members of his riding the same thing that my great grandmother probably told people when they said to her, “We did not get an old age security pension, why should you have one?” She replied, “Would it not have been nice if we had been in the position to be able to do that for you?” We would--

[Committees of the House, May 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree with the member, except for one thing. At those hearings we heard from the Polish groups, the construction industry, and from everyone who had a stake in this. Once the report was tabled, the minister put in place, in the supplementals, the money to begin the regularization of the program, and the NDP pulled the plug.

[Committees of the House, May 11th, 2007]

Not in the House. But anyway, that does not matter, Mr. Speaker.

I think that the issue right here is here and now. I participated in the debate in committee and it is on the record. But that is not the issue. The hon. member agrees with me that the immigration system is in a mess. Now he has the opportunity to put his money where his mouth is.

[Committees of the House, May 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I contributed quite heartily in committee as--

[Committees of the House, May 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration's motion recommending the government to place an immediate moratorium on the deportation of all undocumented workers and their families who pass security and criminality checks while a new immigration policy is put in place.

I want to begin by clarifying who, and not what, the motion addresses. The motion calls for an immediate moratorium on the deportations of all undocumented workers and their families who pass security and criminality checks.

First, let us remind ourselves that this motion concerns living, breathing humans. We are not talking about some kind of infestation of insects or stolen property. We are debating a matter that concerns living, breathing human beings with feelings, dreams and aspirations.

Second, let us also remind ourselves that the motion also concerns workers, so we are debating a matter that concerns living, breathing humans who are also productive contributors to Canada's economy and, precisely, they offer skills and services that are in demand.

Third, let us remind ourselves that the motion concerns not only living, breathing workers, but their families as well, so we are now debating a matter that concerns not only those persons who choose to be here, but those who were born and raised here as well.

Fourth, let us also remind ourselves that the motion concerns not only those workers and their families who pass security and criminality checks. We are debating a matter that concerns those living, breathing, productive members of our society and their families who have also honoured and respected the law in all other respects.

Fifth, because they are working underground, these people are being exploited and they are unable to reap the social benefits of the society to which they contribute.

Finally, in the interest of honesty, I must also be forthright and admit that yes, indeed we are talking about illegal workers, that is, persons who elected to take jobs in Canada without securing the appropriate visas.

In some instances, of course, some of these workers may have entered the country illegally but, in many cases, they may have simply overstayed a legal visa. None of this can or should be denied. However, I believe, like a great many others, that the fact that there are so many illegal workers in Canada is not itself the problem. Rather, it is instead a symptom of a severe problem in our immigration system.

After all, I find it difficult to regard any instance of a skilled worker productively contributing to the economy as a problem in itself. The problem is instead that there is something so wrong with our immigration system that it is unable to meet the very real demands of our economy.

These people are here because we need their skills and services and, in many instances, desperately so. If our immigration system were working as it should, there would be no demand for undocumented workers because the system would have provided all the legal labour necessary for our economy.

The problem is not the workers themselves but the fact that our immigration system is so inefficient at the task assigned to it. Therefore, the objection that normalizing these workers is somehow unfair to those who are working their way through the legal immigration process gets things backwards. Rather, it is unfair that we have an immigration system that is meant to identify the most needed and the most skilled immigrants and yet seems unable to do that in any fashion that meets the genuine demands of our economy.

Such an immigration system is not only unfair to immigrant workers, legal or otherwise, it is unfair to all Canadians. We need an immigration system that works to meet the demands of our economy and anything less is unacceptable.

Nevertheless, it is not for this reason alone that I support this motion. I also support it because it is in our country's own best interest to provide a moratorium and work to integrate these workers into the legal system.

There are presently at least 200,000 illegal workers in Canada and perhaps as many as 500,000. We are talking about skilled tradesmen in construction. We are talking about cooks, cleaners and truck drivers. We are talking about a huge number of people who are filling demands in the workforce. They are here and employed precisely because we need them.

What do we think will happen if we round these people up and deport them? The net result can only be economic chaos. The construction industry will collapse.

Consider also the costs. Identifying, rounding up, and deporting 200,000 to 500,000 workers will require an incredible expenditure of energy and resources. We must consider this matter practically and consider it from a perspective of how to best employ our resources to good effect for all Canadians. Rather than wasting resources deporting persons who have lived and contributed to our country, and are otherwise law-abiding citizens, it makes much more sense to use our resources to integrate these people into our economy.

By deporting them, we are only worse off than we were before. By calling a moratorium and integrating these persons, we will be better off. The answer should be obvious to all. In the same way that we provide amnesty to tax evaders because it is in the best interests of the country to reclaim the lost tax revenue and avoid the expense of pressing criminal charges, I am arguing that all Canadians will be better off if we expend our resources integrating these much needed workers.

In closing, I want to say that I support this motion and the reasons are straightforward. We are talking about living, breathing, productive, law-abiding persons who warrant our respect and contribute to our society, even if our immigration system has failed to identify and integrate them legally.

I believe it is in our own best interests to integrate these workers and their families into our society precisely as we work hard to prepare our immigration system, so it works to the advantage of all Canadians as it was intended to do.

The parliamentary secretary is badly misinformed. I was on the immigration committee and before the NDP pulled the plug on day care and other needed social programs, the Liberal government had in its estimates money to begin regularizing these workers. Members of the present government sat on this immigration committee and it was unanimous in support. We do not need more study. It has been studied to death. Please, let us pass it.

[Multiculturalism, May 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, for years the Prime Minister has called for the elimination of Canada's multicultural policy and program.

In the past few months, community leaders have expressed their deep concern about the government's plans for this vital program. However, they are afraid to speak out publicly for fear their budgets will be slashed.

Once and for all, does the government truly believe the multicultural program deserves federal funding?

[Old Age Security, May 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, introduced in 1952, Canada's old age security program is intended to be universal and to act as the cornerstone of Canada's retirement income system for all Canadians.

Regrettably, the Old Age Security Act presently requires a person to reside in Canada for 10 years before he or she is entitled to receive a monthly pension. This residency requirement effectively excludes many seniors from its benefits, especially new Canadians. Indeed, because of the 10 year residency requirement, it is not at all uncommon for senior citizens to go without the benefits of old age security for many years. In my view, and in the view of a great many seniors across Canada, this outcome is unjust and unacceptable.

Today, poverty among seniors is epidemic, especially among women and immigrants. Reducing the residency requirement is one important measure the government could take to address the injustice of poverty among its seniors.

[Business of Supply, April 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the member's opinion on what exactly Canadians have brought to the Afghan people. As far as I can see it is instability. Under the previous U.S. backed Taliban there may have been oppression, but people did not fear for their lives every single day because of suicide bombers.

I listened to the parliamentary secretary talk about the hospitals and schools that have been built. He has neglected to talk about the hospitals and schools that have been bombed by the Taliban.

According to the New York Times, it is the Netherlands that is building this trust. It is the Netherlands that is building the schools. It is the Netherlands that is building mosques and hospitals. The Netherlands is building up a relationship with the Afghan people.

I understand there is a necessity to suppress the terrorists. However, I believe that as Canadians it is our role to be there along with the Netherlands, not securing a pathway for an oil line to go through Afghanistan.

This war cannot be won with weapons. It can be won only through understanding.

I do not thump my religion much, but I do recall that we are supposed to turn our swords into ploughshares. If anyone thinks that is a mockery, then let us take it all or take none of it.