Bill C-31 (Historical)

Eliminating Entitlements for Prisoners Act

An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act

This enactment amends the Old Age Security Act to preclude incarcerated persons from receiving benefits under this Act while maintaining entitlement to benefits for, and avoiding a reduction in the amounts payable to, their spouse or common-law partner under this Act.

Eliminating Entitlements for Prisoners Act

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, my colleagues raises some very good questions. When we look at how many people currently incarcerated in federal penitentiaries would be affected by this, we are told it would be 400, potentially up to 600 if we include provincial institutions, at a cost of somewhere between $2 million and $10 million.

The bill probably could have been handled much more expeditiously. The last government bill we saw on employment insurance was the military families one, which would affect 60 people a year at a cost of somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million a year. Many things we do in the House are more about politics than they are about principle or policy.

Having said that, we follow the rules of this place and we want to support the bill. We want to get it through.

The member mentioned a number areas where the money could go, whether it be $2 million or $10 million. There are some things that could be done with that in our prison system and for our veterans. I suggest the money could be dedicated to reopening prison farms, which was only a matter of a few million dollars a year and had great benefits. There are many areas where that money could go. It is not a large amount of money in the overall scheme of things on OAS and GIS, but on specific targeted measures it could have made a significant difference.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the member has done a fair amount of research on the bill. However, in his research work, was he able to ascertain why and when federal prisoners started receiving pensions in the first place? I think the member would discover that it was the Joe Clark Conservative government in 1979 that started issuing the cheques to prisoners. How did that come about?

Presumably when the government was doing its research, as any government would, it would have found out the reasons for instituting the practice in the first place. Was it a court order? What where the reasons? There must be some Hansard from those days. There must be some papers available. I have asked government members that questions several times, on the very few times they speak to the bill or any other bill for that matter. I have yet to get a response from them as to why their Conservative government of Joe Clark would bring in this measure in the first place. Now all of a sudden, because of a letter from Clifford Olson and a couple of newspaper articles, we are here, almost in knee-jerk response, cutting these pensions.

We support the bill. Why did the government in 1979 institute this practice in the first place?

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, I know he has asked that question before. I do not know the answer. I do not know why it would have started. I was not aware until recently that it had actually been instituted in 1979 under Prime Minister Clark, a person for whom I have enormous respect. I do not know what the reason is. It might have been something in the courts and if it was post-charter, then maybe that makes it even more problematic now. I do not know the reason for that.

The member is right to ask the government. It is very reasonable. I am sure he could make an appointment with the Minister of Justice or the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development. For five or ten minutes, they would be happy to sit down and be very open and transparent about the whole process. They would be better able to give the history than I would.

For now, the history is important. It is important to look at what other people do, particularly those countries to which we like to compare ourselves, European countries, OECD, the United States and other countries, and figure out where we are now. I would be very interested in what he finds out about 1979. I just cannot answer the question.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is nice to hear my hon. colleague say what the government is not willing to say on some of these issues, which is he does not know why this was instituted in the first place.

A number of times I have seen the government take a very specific case or a story out of a newspaper and then draft entire legislation around it. It is not necessarily just specific to the bill that is before us, because these bills take a great deal of effort. They change the laws in our country, so they do not just apply to the newspaper story case or to individuals. They apply to everybody.

We have seen this developing pattern from the supposed tough on crime government where it uses individual cases, newspaper articles or something in the evening news to build legislation and craft Canadian law. This precedent sends us down a very dangerous road. There is the rule of unintended consequences when we craft legislation. We craft it for one purpose, but the way the law works in applying to everything has all sorts of other consequences.

In the case of the so-called Olson bill, I think my colleagues have expressed it well. Canadians have a great resistance to the idea of also paying for CPP and what not. However, there is this principle of designing legislation based upon media moments that may grab a few more votes and bits of attention. It was said once that we should worry as much about who was going into prison as who was coming out.

Could the hon. member comment on this? The government seems not so concerned with the rehabilitative process of prisoners or the fact that they will likely commit a crime again if they do not receive any kind of service or help whatsoever to rehabilitate themselves fully.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, that is a good question, and I referenced it a bit in my comments. There is certainly a proclivity for the government to take headlines and turn them into immediate pieces of legislation and give them slick-sounding names, which is another thing we see with a lot of the legislation. It does not mean that the bill is wrong, but it does mean that it becomes very political.

We saw that with the last piece of EI legislation on the military families. I am not sure, I have not been around this place long enough, although it seems like an awful long time, to know what can be done without having to come to the House of Commons. We all agree with some of these measures. We could have done it very quickly.

We support this legislation. We think it makes sense. We think it reflects the feelings of Canadians, which is we need to do a better job of reflecting how they want to see their government act in certain matters. However, I certainly agree with my colleague that a lot of these things are taken out of the media, dressed up and some of the policy gets lost amidst the politics, which is disappointing.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-31 on behalf of the Bloc Québécois.

It is important for the people listening to us to fully understand. The title of the bill, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act, will probably get some people's attention. In fact, as we know, the old age security program has not been enhanced for quite some time, except for a few minor changes. I met a senior who told me that recent increases barely covered the cost of a coffee. Therefore, the title—An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act—could be confusing. It might lead people to believe that the government is overhauling the Old Age Security Act. They will be disappointed because there is no major reform in this bill.

There are two words in the text of the bill, “incarcerated persons”, that shed light on the Conservatives' philosophy. They have decided to implement a law and order agenda, which includes preventing criminals from receiving their old age pension.

On the one hand, I would like to say that the Bloc Québécois agrees. This measure has received the nod from all parties in the House. I do not think that anyone approves of criminals in prison receiving the old age pension. It is an aberration of the system. On the other hand, why is this bill necessary? We must understand why the Conservatives decided to let this bill go to committee, with great debate and major discussion. The purpose was to get us talking about it and sidetrack us from talking about the real problems of the elderly, of our seniors living in difficult circumstances. Many seniors live below the poverty line. They deserve a real debate and a real bill to amend the Old Age Security Act so that, among other things, the guaranteed income supplement can be increased by $100 per month, as proposed by the Bloc Québécois.

With regard to the guaranteed income supplement, this bill proposes that spouses be treated as though they were single and that they be entitled to an increase in their guaranteed income supplement. That is fine with me. The criminal is in prison, but his spouse does not necessarily deserve to suffer substantial losses. Therefore, it makes sense that she be treated like a single person.

Once again, nothing in this bill addresses the problems our seniors face. We should have expected as much. Given its grand-sounding title, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act, we expected meaningful old age security reform. However, this is not the direction that the Conservatives are taking and it is definitely not the direction that the Liberals are discussing. We heard them. The Liberals particularly do not want to talk about an increase in the guaranteed income supplement in case they take power since they do not quite know what to do about the expenditures they have announced. For them, therefore, helping seniors is not a way to help our society progress.

Take, for example, the bill introduced by the Bloc Québécois. Every day when they are here in the House, the members of the Bloc Québécois have at heart the interests of citizens, the men and women in Quebec who have worked hard throughout their lives to help our society progress. As I was saying earlier, it was not for nothing that we introduced a bill to increase the guaranteed income supplement by $100 a month, among other things. We also introduced a bill to address losses in company pension plans to help citizens who have seen or who may see a significant drop in their pensions because their company went bankrupt or experienced hardship, as was the case during the recent economic crisis.

The Bloc Québécois introduced a bill to provide a tax credit equivalent to 50% of lost revenues to individuals who have lost pension fund income. This would have allowed them to recover 50% and would have had a domino effect in the provinces, because once a bill like that passes in Ottawa, the provinces follow. This would have enabled those who lost money from their pension plans to recover part of that money through refundable tax credits. Once again, the Liberals voted against this bill.

I have experience here because I have had a plant shut down in my riding. It has now reopened because a new buyer was found, but the buyer did not purchase the company with its pension liabilities. The old company is still in talks and is under the protection of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. The company's asset, the factory, was sold and the new buyer put it back into service. But the fact remains that the Fraser pension plan remains under the protection of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. The pensioners were told that their pension plan was reduced by 35% instead of 40%.

It was a big news story. The Bloc Québécois introduced its bill in the House at that time, and the Liberals voted against it. There are still a few Liberals in the Outaouais, and they felt the need to put their oar in and say that they could not support the Bloc's bill, but that they would come up with their own proposal for solving the pension fund problems. The problem, though, is that these people have already lost money, and if they wait for the Liberals to return to power, they will be waiting for decades. The Liberals should have done something for these people and supported the Bloc Québécois's bill, but they did not.

As expected, the Conservatives opposed the bill. The Conservatives' way of helping the poor is to say they have to work. But when you are 55 or over and retired, it is not easy to find a job.

As for the forests, the Conservatives said it was necessary to diversify the economy. The forests are still there and the trees are still growing, but they said the people who worked in forestry had to become computer scientists. That is the Conservatives' approach. It is not a responsible approach, but something that was put down on paper here in Ottawa by high mucky-mucks who opted for monetary trade-offs and decided to put forestry workers into computer jobs.

In the 1990s, they tried the same thing with call centres, which sprang up all over the regions. Today, all the call centres have gone to India. The fact is that jobs that are created in an effort to diversify the economy are not stable. We can achieve stability in the forest industry by developing forest products and reviving the industry. The forests are still there, and as I said, they are still growing.

Once again, to get to that point we need to invest in research and development, support businesses and offer loan guarantees, as we have been calling for. They complied with WTO rules, but Conservative ministers made a big fuss saying that they did not comply while, at the same time, lawyers from the Canadian government were arguing the opposite before the WTO. Our opponents used statements made by ministers in the House to say that the Canadian government was saying one thing before the WTO and using its lawyers to argue its case while simultaneously telling the Canadian Parliament that this was not the way to proceed. The Conservatives have always acted like a dog chasing its tail. The Liberals cut off their own tail with the sponsorship scandal, so they cannot chase it anymore.

And these things might make you laugh, but they can also make you cry if you are a senior living below the poverty line when rent and food prices continue to rise and the measly old age security pension does not keep up with the rising cost of living. I am talking about the cost of living for seniors. The problem with the members of the House, the Conservatives as much as the Liberals, is that they do not seem to understand that the cost of living for seniors as calculated by Statistics Canada is not the average cost of living calculated by the department. And by the way, the Conservative Party was so tired of seeing the data from Statistics Canada that they changed the census form.

The cost of living for seniors includes food, medication and housing. But the costs of these items are not dropping; they continue to rise. Even property values are rising. Some would say that they are not land owners, but renters. But when the price of property rises, rent increases. If we do not build affordable housing for seniors, it is inevitable—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety on a point of order.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Madam Speaker, this debate is at third reading and is dealing with entitlements for prisoners. My colleagues are going all over the world and their comments have nothing to do with what the intent of the bill is.

If we want to make Parliament work we need to stay on the subject. Certainly the subject is the ending of entitlements for prisoners. When my colleague across the floor talks about all of these other things that have nothing to do with the bill, I would ask, Madam Speaker, that you ask the hon. members to stay on the focus of the bill.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for his comment.

Since we are now at third reading, the member's comments must pertain to the bill.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, first of all, I read the title of the bill, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act. Once again, inevitably, when people see such a title for a bill, especially if they are seniors, they will think that the bill is going to affect their lives. Then, when they see the fine print under the title where it says “incarcerated persons”, they will be very disappointed.

That is the purpose of my presentation here today, that is, to point out once again that, by giving their bill a title as impressive as An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act, the Conservatives want to make us debate a subject that we all agree on.

Why did the Conservatives decide to spice up this bill's title and then indicate in the fine print that it pertains to incarcerated criminals? It is precisely to prevent us from talking about the real issues at hand and the real problems facing our seniors and older people.

I can understand that the Conservatives want to promote their law and order policy and ideology at all cost, but again, all that to say that this is a law and order bill. They want to punish criminals and take away their old age security if they have it. The problem with the Conservatives is that they are so obsessed with law and order that they have forgotten that the vast majority of older people, of our seniors, are living below the poverty line and deserve to have a bill, as the Bloc Québécois had wanted, that would improve the guaranteed income supplement by increasing it by $100 a month, in order to help seniors cope with increased housing, food and drug expenses.

In the meantime, prisoners are being housed and fed and their drugs are paid for. That is how the Conservatives operate. They decide to get rid of old age pensions for criminals, but they forget that the vast majority of our seniors do not have enough money to pay for their housing or to cover their food and drug costs. That is the reality. The Conservatives are obsessed with law and order and are abandoning good citizens who have paid taxes their entire lives, who have contributed to society and who are now seeing criminals get all the attention in relation to this bill.

We support this bill and have said so from the very beginning. All parties in this House support it. The problem is that we are still talking about it. We should have settled this matter and had a real bill to amend the Old Age Security Act in order to help our seniors who cannot make ends meet and who are living below the poverty line. We have to help them meet their own physical and mental health needs. However, that is not what we are discussing. The government prefers to talk about law and order and eliminating inmates' pension entitlement. As I said, we support this measure, as do all parties in the House.

Why has this matter not been settled yet? Quite simply because the Conservatives have decided to draw out the debate. That is what they want. They want us to talk about it and discuss it. While we discuss the so-called “Act to amend the Old Age Security Act” in Parliament, the people who read the title will think that they are being looked after and that seniors who have trouble making ends meet and who live below the poverty line will be taken care of. It creates a false impression that their needs are being addressed. Instead, the Conservatives are merely promoting their ideology, with the support of the Liberals—all too often we forget about the Liberals—and once again are ignoring the problems of seniors.

In closing, Bill C-31 before us must be passed as quickly as possible. It makes sense to preclude incarcerated persons from receiving their old age pension, particularly in light of the fact that they receive shelter, food, health care and medications free of charge while our seniors, who have worked their entire lives to advance our society, find it difficult to meet their own needs when it comes to housing, food and medications.

That is what the Conservatives, with the support of the Liberals, are forcing us to live with. For two years now, every time a budget vote has come around, the Liberals have stayed seated or not shown up with enough members. They are always there to support the Conservatives. They are like a crutch that keeps hobbling along. We have been watching the Liberals hobble along. Their disease is spreading to the Conservatives, who are limping along as well. That is how they operate.

I am pleased to say that we will support Bill C-31 because it will prevent prisoners, people who are incarcerated, from receiving old age security, and will still protect their spouses. These spouses will be considered single under the Old Age Security Act and will therefore be entitled to a larger guaranteed income supplement amount.

However, I must point out that the impressive title, “An Act to Amend the Old Age Security Act”, should not fool the public and the seniors who are watching us. This will not solve their problems. They deserve a monthly increase of $100 to their guaranteed income supplement, as suggested by the Bloc Québécois. They deserve a real debate and real changes to the Old Age Security Act so that they can have adequate income to pay for housing, food and medication. They have spent their entire lives advancing our society. We want them to know that the Bloc Québécois and all of its elected members will always defend them here in the House. That is what we do and will continue to do as long as they continue to place their trust in us.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member despite his statements about the Liberal Party not working as hard as he would like us to work. I thought it was kind of interesting that some members of the government simply want to stop this debate and get on with it when we have this situation where all of the parties agree on the intent of the bill. We have learned some lessons going through this and the member has raised some very important points about unintended consequences to seniors and in other circumstances where this may be applied.

The member for Windsor—Tecumseh raised an issue with regard to whether the bill would suffer a charter challenge. In his view, it is likely that it would not, not that it should not, but that it would not, simply because those who could afford to pursue such an avenue would not likely want to fight that battle.

My question for the member is whether there is some concern that there may be some problems with regard to violations of the charter. I wonder if the member could comment on whether the government and the Minister of Justice in fact have done their due diligence with regard to determining that the results or the impacts of this bill on not just Clifford Olson, but all others who would be impacted by it, would in fact respect their charter rights and make sure that we are all treated equally under the law.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my Liberal colleague's question. He is asking whether the bill would withstand a charter challenge. I would say there are grounds for a challenge. The courts will decide. The problem with the Liberal Party is that it has wholeheartedly supported the way the Conservatives have handled the economy for at least the past two years, since the 2008 election.

When the Bloc Québécois introduced a bill in the House that would give a tax credit to people who lost pension income because of a company bankruptcy and the Liberals did not stand up, I hope it was not because the bill violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Pensioners with these companies that went bankrupt deserved better than that. They deserved to have us stand up for them, but the Liberals did not do that. It is great that they are talking about the charter. They seem to have something of a conscience today, and that is great. I only hope it will not prevent them from making decisions.

[Daniel Paillé, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Madam Speaker, since I sit near my colleague, I know that there are many things he wanted to talk more about, but he did not have time. I am going to give him a chance to talk about them by asking him this question: what would he like to expand on?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is how the federal government treats our seniors. The Conservatives have picked up where the Liberals left off. Employment insurance is a perfect example. The Liberals decided to plunder $54 billion from the fund and now the Conservatives are saying there is no money left, that we have to start over. The Conservatives are saying they were not the ones who stole from the fund; it was the Liberals. Our unemployed workers are the ones who lose in the end.

The same goes for our seniors. The Liberals did not adjust old age pensions as they should have. And the Conservatives decided to do the same as the Liberals. Under the Liberal government, the Bloc Québécois called for a monthly increase of $100 in the guaranteed income supplement. The Liberals said no. We asked the Conservatives for the same thing and they also said no. That is the reality of those two old parties. They decided to abandon seniors, older people, unemployed workers and forestry workers. I thank my hon. colleague for giving me the opportunity to talk about it.

Now they are wondering why people have had enough of them. It is quite simply because their way of doing politics is outdated; it is no longer appropriate for our times. Those two parties do not care about defending the interests of seniors and workers the way the Bloc Québécois does. We will continue to defend them every day that we are here in the House.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about the misleading title of this bill. The Conservatives are introducing a bill that says it would amend the Old Age Security Act. My colleague explained to us the anomaly between the content of the bill and its title. With such a title, the Conservatives could have included a measure to make good on a promise, such as automatic registration of all people entitled to receive the guaranteed income supplement. They promised to do that in the 2005-06 election campaign, but they have not done it yet. Because it is not automatic, there are still many people, many seniors, who are not receiving the guaranteed income supplement even though they are entitled to it. It would be very easy for the government to make it automatic. I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about that.