Bill C-488 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Employment Insurance Regulations (excluding pension from earnings when calculating employment insurance benefits)

This bill was last introduced in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in September 2008.

Sponsor

Raymond Simard  Liberal

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of Nov. 28, 2007
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment amends the Employment Insurance Act and the Employment Insurance Regulations to exclude pensions from earnings when calculating employment insurance benefits.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Employment Insurance ActRoutine Proceedings

November 28th, 2007 / 3:10 p.m.
See context

Liberal

Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-488, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Employment Insurance Regulations (excluding pension from earnings when calculating employment insurance benefits).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this afternoon to introduce my private member's bill.

Currently, Canadians who receive pension income and wish to continue to work or go back to work are forced to pay employment insurance premiums, but they would most likely not benefit from the insurance plan if they were laid off. The reason is that their pension income is currently considered as revenue and offsets the insurance benefits. My bill plans to change that so that their pension income would not be in that calculation.

I am bringing this bill forward for two basic reasons. First is the issue of fairness. I do not believe that any Canadian should be paying into an insurance plan when he or she could never benefit from the plan. Second, given the current labour shortage in this country, it is a total disincentive for people to go back to work or to continue working once they are receiving a pension.

This is a correction.

This is good for Canadian seniors and Canada's economy. I thank my colleague from Madawaska—Restigouche for his support. I plan to convince my other colleagues in this House to support this bill.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)