Bill C-201 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act (deletion of deduction from annuity)

This enactment amends the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act to eliminate the deduction of Canada Pension Plan benefits from the annuity payable under each of these Acts.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River for reminding me of one of the important background points in this whole debate.

First of all, Bill C-18 has been criticized because it is not often that a bill amending the pension act for the RCMP is going to come up before Parliament. It may not happen again for another decade. So there is a missed opportunity not to address some of the other glaring oversights and shortcomings to the bill. We were not successful in getting amendments through committee stage.

Secondly, the morale of our national police force, the RCMP, is so struck down at this point in time because of the rollback. The government will say it did not roll back the wages, but in actual fact, there were increases of 3.5% scheduled to take effect for this year and next. The government cancelled the projected wage increase and dictated that it should be 1.5%. This perhaps is the best and most compelling argument for the right to free collective bargaining and negotiations, as opposed to the interference of the employer, in this case, with the absolute power beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond the employer's ability to pay. None of these matters entered into the equation at all. They simply received a letter in the mail saying their increase was going to be 1.5% instead of 3.5%.

For a party that claims to be tough on crime and sympathetic to the police, it is a hell of a way to treat their employees.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg talked about bargaining. Being a trade unionist myself, I know what he is talking about. He talked about bargaining for a dollar and putting 50¢ in wages and 50¢ in the pension plan.

When a pension plan has a lot of extra money in it, companies will take it to do as they please, a lot like what the Liberals did with the employment insurance plan when we had billions of dollars in excess. I would like to ask my colleague whether, in the future, this Parliament could pass a law that would prevent this from happening, that would prevent future governments from changing this law and would prevent companies and the government from taking money in pension funds.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, surpluses in pension plans should be considered the deferred wages and the property of the beneficiaries and employees covered by the plan. It is not a pile of dough that employers can get their hands on. Marcel Massé, the former Treasury Board president, should be criticized and condemned for being the one to set this precedent. It should be this Parliament, perhaps even this session of this Parliament, that establishes once and for all that the employer has no right to the deferred wages in the surplus of a pension plan. That money is the employees' money, held in trust for when they need it in their retirement years.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-18. It is incredibly timely, given the fact that we are currently in the middle of National Police Week. We are always having to seek ways to ensure that we strengthen our national police force. Certainly one of the ways we can do that is ensuring that they are properly compensated, and after a lifetime of service and dedication, that they receive the pension they so rightly deserve.

In general, certainly I support the bill. There are a number of important measures that ensure the flexibility needed for RCMP officers to achieve the pension they should have. There have been some technical problems in the past that have prohibited that from happening, which the bill largely addresses. However, there are a number of concerns that I still have that will not stop me from supporting the bill but need to be highlighted nonetheless.

The first issue of concern, which came out in committee, was the fact that the first six months that RCMP officers spend training at Depot is not counted towards their pensionable service time. This is a concern, because clearly it is a period of time when they are engaged with the force and are working full time in its employ. If there is a technical difference in the fact that they are in training as opposed to actually being an officer, we need to recognize that time, particularly when we talk about the importance of recruitment and how difficult it is, with the number of retirements that are happening, to make sure that we have the number of recruits and the quality of recruits flowing into the system to keep the force strong.

I had the opportunity to visit the depot in Winnipeg and talk with a lot of the cadets there, and the calibre is incredible. We are very fortunate to have some amazing men and women who are stepping forward to serve in the RCMP. However, it really does occur to a person that if they are spending an enormous amount of time there, that is time that should be counted towards their pensions.

There are a number of other aggravating factors, though, that are important to bring up in this discussion. When we are talking about trying to fix some of the issues that create problems for recruiting for the RCMP, it is important to mention some of the things that are happening currently.

The first one that caused me grave concern was the issue of pay parity with other police forces. I recall very clearly the Prime Minister being in Vancouver and making a promise to RCMP officers that he would ensure they would receive the same wages as other police forces and the issue of pay parity was one of fundamental equality.

We expected the Prime Minister to live up to his word. The government went so far as to even sign a contract with RCMP officers to fulfill that commitment of pay parity, before it was promptly ripped up and thrown out. The promise was broken and his back was turned on those RCMP officers.

That had, obviously, a devastating impact on morale, but it also has a huge impact upon retention and on hiring new officers. It is very difficult to get somebody to come to the RCMP as a recruit if we are not even willing to pay them the same amount as other police are being paid.

If the issue of breaking the promise on pay parity was not enough, the government went further. Just in the last number of days, the government made the decision to appeal a landmark decision of the Ontario Superior Court to allow the RCMP the right to choose whether or not they want to pursue collective bargaining.

This is a democratic choice enjoyed by every other police force in the country. In a western democracy such as ours, it is a right that we would expect all police forces to be able to enjoy. A number of people expressed surprise that it was not something the RCMP already had as a right to be able to explore.

The government appealed this decision, essentially sending the message that the democratic right of RCMP officers to have collective bargaining was something it did not support.

After the broken promise on pay parity, they were further kicked and morale further beaten down by having a government that said not only should they not be paid the same as other police officers, but they should not have the same democratic rights either.

To me, that is deeply concerning. It sends the wrong message to our men and women in the RCMP who do such an incredible job keeping our communities safe, and it is an abysmal failure of the government to live up to its rhetoric.

The government talks about being tough on crime, but being tough on crime means that it has to be supportive of the people who stop crime from happening, who work our streets and keep our communities safe. We have to be honest with them.

Trust is everything for police officers. They have to trust one another. When they go into dangerous situations, they have to know that a fellow officer has their back. Their word is their bond. So when trust is violated, it has an even greater consequence than it would perhaps have in other places. Therefore, that breach of trust is exceptionally serious.

I want to congratulate the member for Etobicoke Centre on a private member's bill that he brought up in the House today that addresses another matter of fundamental inequity. That is, when an RCMP officer is killed in the line of duty, essentially only two months' pay is made available.

That is in stark contrast to what is offered in most other police forces, where it is recognized that if an officer is killed in the line of duty, in service to his or her community, money should be given to the officer's family to allow it the opportunity to maintain living expenses, to pay bills, to keep its house, and to pay for groceries. Two months, frankly speaking, is wrong and needs to be corrected. I wholeheartedly support the efforts by the member for Etobicoke Centre to bring forward legislation to change that, because it is important.

With that as context and saying there are a number of other factors that we also need to be looking at, I can say that I support this bill, because it does achieve important ends. However, what I do not want to see happen is for us to pass this bill and think we have done our job.

There are a lot of other ways we have to support RCMP officers, such as paying them the same as other officers, giving them the same democratic rights as other police forces, ensuring that when they are killed in the line of duty the government supports their families, and making sure that we keep our word, that when a promise is made, such as the promise the Prime Minister made in Vancouver, that commitment is maintained.

With that, I look forward to the passage of this bill, as well as these other matters being addressed, and I will certainly support the private member's bill put forward by the member for Etobicoke Centre.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened very carefully to my colleague's speech. In it he commented that the government is claiming to be tough on crime, but in fact is preventing RCMP officers from having salaries equivalent to those earned by members of other Canadian police forces. At the same time, it is preventing them from having the same democratic rights, that is the right to unionize. That is an absolutely fair right.

We know that crime today is far more organized and complex than it used to be. There was a time 50 years ago when the mafia was top dog in the organized crime scene, but now we have the Chinese triads, the Japanese yakusa, the Russian mafia, the biker and street gangs, and all of these criminal groups demand increasing expertise from police forces, at a time of staff cutbacks. Yet they are still claiming to be tough on crime.

My question for my colleague is this: since the Liberals were in power before, what did they do to get tough on crime and to treat the RCMP properly?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, certainly the Liberal Party has a proud tradition of supporting the RCMP and recognizing the important work it does each and every day as a national police force.

When talking about being tough on crime, it has to go a lot further than rhetoric. I gave a lot of examples of how I feel the Conservative government has been very hard on police but not so much on crime.

As an example, when we look at last year's crime prevention budget, which is critical to preventing crimes and victimization from occurring in the first place, that budget was more than 50% unspent. In fact, in the last year that the Liberal government was in power, there was nearly $75 million being spent every year on crime prevention. Last year, it was down to somewhere around $15 million or $12 million spent on crime prevention.

We can look at the attempts by the Conservative government to gut the national registry for firearms, which both the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Association have said is an essential tool for them to combat crime and keep our streets safe.

We can look at the fact that our correctional system is rife with all kinds of problems. The correctional investigator is telling us that it is in many cases making the situation worse and the people being released are not getting the programs and services they need to deal with issues like addiction or mental health problems. We are treating our prisons like hospitals. When these people are released from these systems, they have a much greater likelihood of recidivism.

In so many ways, when we see the Conservatives being tough on police, we see them being soft on crime.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has referred to the inequity that exists with respect to the manner in which the RCMP is capable of doing its own negotiations, in a stand-alone labour relations context. He has also mentioned the fact that in balancing that out, the government, in order to validate the position it is taking that the RCMP must not have those same rights, is using the argument, I take it, that the RCMP, through the federal government, has entered into provincial contractual arrangements where it is now the last line of defence in many of those provinces that do not have a disagreement and it will use that in court to justify the position that it has taken in that appeal in denying the RCMP those universal standards of labour rights.

I wonder if my colleague could comment on whether that is a fair position to take, in the interests of equity, in the interests of it being perceived as protecting the public.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think fundamentally the answer is no, that it is not a fair position to take, that it is not equitable, and that it treats the RCMP really as a second-class police force.

It is universally accepted that whether or not we are talking about firefighters, police officers or any officers, they have the right to collective bargaining. That is an essential part of their democratic right to ensure that their rights are treated fairly. I think that the Prime Minister's ability in Vancouver to break his word on pay parity, his ability to turn his back on RCMP officers and not pay them the wage that he had committed to them, just underscores the point that the RCMP should have the right to choose whether or not it wants to pursue collective bargaining.

So, in so many ways, I think this really is unjust and inequitable.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, a discussion of the importance of collective bargaining for the RCMP, I think, is overdue. A number of years ago RCMP officers, who worked on the police association, informed me that there were upwards of 6,000 grievances that were filed and still not acted upon within their hierarchical structure. So pay issues are one thing. Issues of pensions and working conditions are another. So, all these come together.

My question for my hon. colleague is this. Over the course of the Liberals' tenure and control of Parliament, where were they on giving the RCMP the ability to have collective bargaining?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the answer is that RCMP officers should have the right to collective bargaining. They are pursuing that now. They say that they want that option and they should be given it. I do not see how I can be any more clear on that point. Now that they have made that request and they want the opportunity for their members to have their say, that is what we should allow.

I would point out to the member that the key point is their democratic right, their opportunity to make the choice themselves. It is not for us to impose it upon them. Whether or not they choose to pursue collective bargaining or they may make the choice to stay with the status quo, the point is it has to be their choice, placed in their hands. They have made that request. I think it is incumbent upon the government and this Parliament to not stand in their way to make that choice.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, many have referred to these changes being modest. In fact, they are pretty thin gruel when put into the context of the government doing everything it can to prevent the RCMP from having the opportunity for collective bargaining. Officers are expected to work in some of the most remote communities of the country and to do shift work. If they set up families, their spouses often have to stay at home. When they pay that ultimate price, what does the RCMP Act, the same act that prevents collective bargaining, give them? It gives two months salary to the family for the life of the RCMP officer.

Is this not a clear demonstration, should they decide they wish to have collective bargaining, that the government should not stand in the way and prevent RCMP officers who want fairness?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member both for his question and for the bill he introduced in this House. I think it is important and speaks to this issue of equity. He is absolutely right that one should have the opportunity, as a police force, to have the choice of collective bargaining. I think that lack of choice has meant that these police officers have really not been treated fairly by the government over the last number of years.

When we look at a comparison of the RCMP, our national police force, which is asked to do some incredibly difficult assignments in remote areas and is doing very difficult work, its officers often being moved from location to location, which is enormously stressful on their families, and we see that they are not even paid the same as other police forces, are not given the same democratic rights, and are not given the same benefits when they die in the line of duty serving their communities, that is grossly unjust and is something we need to see corrected.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the average citizen may find the bill fairly boring and, at first glance, may not understand what it is about. It can be summarized in clear terms. The bill is fairly narrow in scope but it is currently very important in order to foster the development of the RCMP at a time when it is having difficulty recruiting members. Overall, it is a good measure for police forces in general.

This bill will facilitate the transfer to the RCMP of police officers who have experience in police services other than the RCMP. The greatest obstacle at present is that the police officers would lose the pension benefits to which they have contributed for a number of years. The bill would make possible a transfer to the RCMP of the pension amounts accumulated in the Ontario Provincial Police fund, for example. Therefore, the officers joining the RCMP in the middle of their careers could make contributions equivalent to those made by police officers who already have the same number of years' experience in the RCMP or they could be allowed to transfer their pension from the Ontario police fund—to use the same example—to the RCMP pension fund.

There are two aspects that must be addressed. We must deal with the rights of members who leave one police force to join another by allowing them to retain the pension benefits already accumulated and the two organizations involved must be allowed to have pension transfer agreements.

Thus, it is relatively straightforward but, by necessity, such matters need to be written in language that is fairly complex, language that I would even call difficult to wade through.

To start with, I think this is a good measure, for several reasons, not just because the RCMP is having problems at present, but also because, in general, it is a good thing for people to be able to change jobs over the course of their lives. A lot of people start with a company or an organization and at some point lose interest, but they are still productive and would like to work. They would still be interested in working if we allowed them to have an equivalent career somewhere else where their experience would be appreciated. But if they are held back by the fact that if they transferred to another career they would lose the benefits they have accumulated over 15 or 20 or 25 years, people instead decide to stay in their first job, a job that no longer interests them. I am convinced that these people are no longer as effective in that job. They are also not happy, and the other organization that could have taken them on is deprived of their experience.

So in general, in society, it is a good thing to make it possible for people to have successive careers over the course of their productive lives, their working lives. It is good for the people, it is good for morale and it is good for the organizations. In fact, I would mention in passing that the House of Commons probably benefits from this, because when we come to the House of Commons, or even to a legislative assembly, we are pursuing a different career.

That is why we support this principle. Now, some specific problems have been raised. They are in fact important for the people who are working. One member who spoke before me made the point that pension fund contributions, even contributions to a pension fund by the employer, are deferred wages. Those wages are given to someone for the work they are doing, but they are deferred precisely so the person can draw a pension at a time when they are no longer able to work.

That is how it was seen at the time. It is also so that the benefits one earns from working can be deferred in time.

The calculations done to determine the amount have to be very expert. The unions and government actuaries are very careful to count not only the years, but also the months, weeks and days worked so the person can be given the exact amount owing to them, in proportion to their contributions and their employer’s contributions, and so on. These things can seem pointless, but they are not. In practice, they are measured in dollars and cents.

Some little things should have been corrected at the same time. Other speakers have mentioned them. There is the time spent in training. For years, when young constables joined the RCMP, they did about six months’ training and they received pay, out of which a contribution to a future pension fund was deducted, in case they became members of the RCMP and made their career there. This was considered unfair because many cadets did not become members and did not pass all the exams used for selecting the best candidates. Those contributions were therefore somewhat unfair.

This situation was corrected in 1992. Cadets no longer get a salary but a housing allowance, which is equivalent to salary. Previously, it was counted from their first day of training. Thus, they contributed six more months and received a bit more money for these six months. Now that they get an allowance, their pension only starts counting after their training is completed. This applies to all cadets who joined the RCMP after 1992.

People who come from the Ontario police or another provincial police force were generally paid a salary as soon as they started their training. Contributions were withheld and their pensions will be a bit higher. As a result, there are three categories in the RCMP: people who will get a pension calculated from the first day they put on an RCMP uniform, people who will get a pension calculated from six months after they put on the uniform and remained in it, and people from other police forces who will get a pension calculated from their first day of training.

This injustice should have been corrected, but that is not enough to stop us from voting for a bill we think is otherwise quite good. When we were sitting in committee, I had the feeling the RCMP had noted the problem and would find an appropriate solution. The solution is actually very simple.

Since the RCMP accepts people who did not start their career with the force and proposes that they transfer their pension or contribute to it in order to be on the same footing as other officers with the same number of years of experience, that is to say, buy back their pension, why not allow the people who became cadets after 1992 to buy back these six months? They could contribute as much as they would have during their six months of training.

I hope this problem can be resolved soon. For the time being, though, we will vote for the bill in view of its objectives and how urgent they are.

Other problems have also been raised, including seats on the advisory committee that administers the RCMP pension fund.

Officers who sat on this committee received contributions in addition to their salaries. Our understanding is that these contributions were the equivalent of several thousand dollars, often more than $10,000 a year. This was additional pay, therefore, provided for work that only amounted to approving the actuaries’ calculations.

I do not think these officers would have been allowed to help themselves so easily to the profits generated by the pension fund if the people who were contributing most to the fund—the ordinary members of the RCMP—had been represented. This problem must be resolved in the same way that the problem of real representation for RCMP officers was resolved, not only in regard to the pension fund but in other regards as well. Other people have already spoken about this representation.

The RCMP is the only large police force that is not unionized. I should say one of the few large police forces, because some small police forces may not be unionized. In Quebec, virtually everyone is unionized. I do not know for sure in the rest of Canada, but all police officers have a kind of union. These associations are called brotherhoods, which are basically a kind of union. They obviously do not have the right to strike, but they can engage in collective bargaining over their wages and working conditions.

The RCMP is the only non-unionized police force, although there have been attempts to form an association for years, 10 at least, and more likely 15 to 20. They experienced a kind of semi-failure before the Supreme Court of Canada in 1999. I use that term because the Supreme Court of Canada did at least recognize their right to choose their representatives for negotiating their collective agreement. However, given the specific nature of their work, they could not exercise that right within a union organization that included other government employees.

The RCMP won its case with the 1999 ruling in Delisle v. Canada. This is a case I am very familiar with, having read it numerous times, incidentally. It addressed a number of principles with which I was concerned as Quebec's minister of public safety, and even before that as a lawyer. In fact, my last 10 years as a lawyer were in a labour law practice, although I was a criminal lawyer. So I heard all about it, and what is more I have read it thoroughly.

It is clear to anyone reading this case that the proper interpretation is that the Supreme Court of Canada recognized that RCMP officers had the right of association. That right of association, which is specifically recognized by the Charter, is the right to choose one's representatives. Given the particular situation of the RCMP officers, however, they could not be members of a larger labour organization which included other employees of the government.

In my opinion, if the government and the RCMP had shown any intellectual honesty, they would have wasted no time in allowing them to organize, but within a labour organization that was theirs alone and had no connection with other unions.

Instead, the whole thing was just put on hold, thereby forcing the RCMP employees to embark on lengthy legal proceedings. They had just been successful in the Ontario Superior Court, but, despite that, still had to appeal. The situation remained unchanged until they got to the Supreme Court of Canada, where this time they were told they were not in a labour organization with other unions and needed to apply the right recognized for them by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1999.

I was the public safety minister in Quebec, and there was one union that represented the Sûreté du Québec and a separate union that represented the Montreal police. I did not have direct responsibility for the Montreal police, but I was responsible for the Sûreté du Québec.

The union representatives were elected by the members. I respected the people who worked under me, and I consulted them through their elected representatives. With that attitude, I enjoyed a good relationship with the Sûreté du Québec, although it too suffered as we worked to achieve a zero deficit. We did not always give employees increases commensurate with the skills and higher education they were required to have. I believe that the atmosphere at the RCMP would be much better if the members were allowed to elect their own representatives, as members of other police forces in Canada do.

Currently, the members of the RCMP are represented by people their superiors appoint. This is known as a company union. A company union is an organization whose leaders are appointed by management. That is what is in place at the RCMP. It is funny, but there is a conflict. We will not go into detail about the conflict among them.

Why is the Conservative government taking so long, and why does it have this attitude toward the RCMP? The previous speaker rightly mentioned that the government had promised a salary increase and signed an agreement with the appointed representatives of the RCMP members, but had decided after the most recent election to take it away from them. Clearly, this is seriously undermining the relationship of trust that the government should have with the police. It is odd that this is coming from a government that brags about being tough on crime.

I heard an earlier speaker say that the government was tough on crime. God knows that I have spent my career dealing with crime, first as a young crown prosecutor, later as minister of justice and minister of public safety in Quebec and now as a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I know one thing for sure: what is important is not to be tough on crime or soft on crime, but to be smart on crime. We have to take a smart approach to dealing with crime. Sometimes, that means being tough on some types of offenders, and other times, it means being more understanding and putting more emphasis on rehabilitation. That is how to get the best results.

When I hear the Conservatives talk about the need to get tough on crime, it is quite something to hear their tone of voice and how they applaud one another. These people are not saying they will solve the problem of crime. Of course, we are looking for solutions in that regard, because managing crime is not easy. It is as hard to manage as psychology. Psychology is not an exact science, like math. Psychological treatments are different. Each must be adapted to the individual in order to achieve results. Certain people respond better to certain types of intervention. It requires a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity. The same is true for crime. There is no simple formula, such as, “Get tough and you will get the results”.

The Americans are the toughest in the world. People may not know this, but Americans have 768 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. They managed to beat Russia, China and even South Africa, which had one of the highest rates, with nearly 500 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. We have 116 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants at this time. That is exactly the same rate as Australia, although it has varied. It is comparable to Europe and Japan, which, 10 years ago, had 36 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. Their rate has risen to 56 per 100,000 inhabitants. In any case, those countries are effective.

Being tough on crime is not the answer. I think that it is actually somewhat hypocritical. They are not tough on crime because it is effective; they are tough on crime because they think it will get them more votes. That is the only—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I am sorry to have to interrupt the hon. member.

The hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his excellent speech. He did a good job of summarizing the gist of this bill.

He mentioned the right of association granted to the RCMP in 1999 after its members took the matter to court. After that, the Bloc Québécois introduced a bill to amend the Canada Labour Code to allow RCMP members to unionize. However, as my colleague pointed out in his speech, the right of association, the right of RCMP members to negotiate a collective agreement, is not yet a done deal.

Moreover, as my colleague so ably explained, members of the RCMP were offered a pay raise. Since the last election, the Conservatives have done away with that agreement and imposed another without negotiation.

I would like my colleague to explain the Liberals' and the Conservatives' reasons for preventing the RCMP from negotiating. The Liberals were in power before, and this issue has been around for 10 or 15 years. I would like my colleague to comment on that.