Bill C-501 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (termination and severance pay)

This enactment amends the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to ensure that the claim of a clerk, servant, travelling salesperson, labourer or worker who is owed termination and severance pay by a person is secured as of the date of the bankruptcy or receivership by security on the person's current assets.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Bonjour à tous. Welcome to the 57th meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science, and Technology.

We'll be dealing with Bill C-501 today in clause-by-clause consideration.

We have with us Mr. Rafferty, who is the sponsor of the bill and who I understand has some amendments as well.

We'll go directly to Mr. Rafferty and we'll be dealing with clause 1.

(On clause 1)

Protection of Workers

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address a very serious issue in Thunder Bay—Superior North and across Canada.

Recently, hundreds of forestry sector workers in northwestern Ontario lost their severance and termination pay, which they had earned through many years of hard work. Many are out tens of thousands of dollars because bankrupted companies are not held accountable to ensure that pensions, severances or back wages are protected. We have even seen companies or parent companies raid their workers' pay for their assets. Many people have lost their homes, small businesses, marriages and some have even lost their lives to suicide.

There is legislation before the House that will start to fix these wrongs. I seconded Bill C-501, introduced by the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, after seeing the damage done to communities when owners and bankers come before workers. We must protect workers and their families and pass Bill C-501.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much.

To members, you need to know that we have two more meetings scheduled on this, so we will need to have witnesses as well. After that we will be dealing with Bill C-501, clause by clause. We were able to get a date on the 15th, so our two meetings on this subject will be done and then we'll deal with that.

The meeting is adjourned.

Parliament of Canada Act

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was heartened by the House leader's words.

I rise today to seek unanimous consent for the following motion. I move that it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology that it have the power, during its consideration of C-501, An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and other Acts (pension protection), to amend section 136 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. I ask for that because Canadians want us to work for them not against them.

If you seek it, Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that you will find unanimous consent.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak to this motion. The motion deals with the Investment Canada Act and to begin with it in our next set of meetings, excluding the meeting set aside for Bill C-501, whenever it comes.

To be frank with you, this is interesting, being from Burlington, across the bay from Stelco and Dofasco, both now foreign-owned, one having difficulty, the other not. In fact, one announced an expansion, an increase in staff, and more investment. So I'm very interested in finding out why one investment in the exact same industry on the same street is successful and one is not. I am looking forward to it. I think it's an important discussion.

I can tell you, Mr. Chair, that of all the calls I get—there are lots of calls on individual problems, of course, and those are case issues and on broader policy—the vast majority have to do with either CRA or Investment Canada, to be honest with you, and what's happening with investment.

People will ask me, “How can your government allow for foreigners to come in and buy this?” My response, Mr. Chair, to be perfectly frank with you, is very polite, but I do ask them about what needs to happen for Canadians to be investing in Canadian companies. Why are Canadians, seeing what's happening in the world...? Why didn't Dofasco, for example, know that there were going to be amalgamations in the steel business? Why? They're a very big player, a very good player, with a quality product. How does their saying go, that steel is their business, but people are number one, or whatever that saying was? So why do Canadian companies wait to be sold?

Let's be frank about the Investment Canada Act. This government is the only government that ever turned down an investment. It's happened twice now. The potash one was the recent one, and a few years ago the Canadarm manufacturer--I forget the name of the company--was under threat of being sold to a foreign entity.

I watched a show last night on the CBC, or whatever. They had a roving reporter in Winnipeg and they were asking people why they weren't paying any attention to federal politics. I think today is an example of why people aren't paying attention to federal politics. There were lots of comments about how we should be working together, and so on and so forth.

At the end of the day, I think what the parliamentary secretary has proposed in terms of a priority for Canadians...it's a look at what we're doing in the Investment Canada Act. We came to a conclusion among all of us that we should study the Investment Canada Act. The parliamentary secretary indicated that people have talked about it in the past. He's quoted them. I don't have those quotes, but he's quoted other members of Parliament from other parties. It's a reasonable request.

The part to deal with the CRTC decision comes next in his proposal, and it's still in front of the length of time that's allowed for that decision, which is coming out at the beginning of March. So there is time for this committee to deal with those issues.

Is anybody paying attention? It's unbelievable. Are you paying attention to me? Oh, that's very good.

There is time to deal with the issues. Then, again, we talk about Bill C-568--

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I want to speak to the motion. I just want to make sure it's clear that we can and will study the Investment Canada Act.

In fact, actually we'll do a better study the way I'm going to propose it after this. I'm going to propose that we actually look at the CRTC's recent decisions for three meetings. Following that, we can then work concurrently at the Investment Canada Act, as well as on the census bill that has come forward. I think that could be done very well, and we can probably have more and better meetings for that. I think they're very serious issues that Canadians do want to hear more about.

I don't see a downside on the CRTC decisions right now. I want to make sure we get the best witnesses possible, and I'm not sure we can do that by rushing through in the next couple of days to try to get people. On the Investment Canada Act, we might want some international witnesses to come forward too. For me, that gives us a chance to get our witness lists up and going, and we certainly can do concurrent meetings and we can actually review that at some point in time.

I also have a notation here that at some point, when Bill C-501 becomes clearer, we ought to spend one meeting to finish that bill too.

So I will be immediately proposing that, followed by Mr. Lake's motion.

Pension Protection

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present two petitions signed by literally thousands of Canadians, calling on the government to affirm that pension benefits are in fact deferred wages, to elevate defined benefit plans to secured status in the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, and to pass into law any legislation before it, such as Bill C-501, that would achieve these objectives.

Pensions

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on Friday, a high court in the United Kingdom handed down a game-changing ruling. Pensioners in that country have been moved to the front of the line of creditors during bankruptcy proceedings. Here at home, Canadian retirees are at the bottom of the list when it comes to claiming the money owed to them.

New Democrat Bill C-501 is at the industry committee right now but the Conservatives have opposed it from the beginning.

What are the Conservatives waiting for? When will they support Bill C-501 and stand with Canadians instead of their friends on Bay Street?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition today on behalf of literally hundreds and hundreds of constituents in my riding who are talking about the inadequacies of the OAS, GIS and CPP and what it is doing for seniors across the country who are living in poverty. The petitioners need this situation addressed today.

The seniors in our region and, indeed, across the country who are living below the poverty line is a travesty, an injustice and a black mark on all of us in this House of Commons, and one that we ought to rectify.

The petitioners are not only calling for an increase, but are saying that when companies go bankrupt, as my colleague from Thunder Bay has done with Bill C-501, we need to put those seniors and pensioners at the front of the line when it comes to creditors. They also say that we ought to ensure that pensions are funded from private enterprises and private companies.

Ultimately, the petitioners are saying that no senior in this country should live in poverty. The petitioners are calling on the government to end poverty for seniors today.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

That motion was not to end Bill C-501. The motion of instruction is what you're talking about, right? The motion of instruction was originally put forward to increase the scope of the bill. In other words, what's happened with the bill now is that if amendments were to be introduced now that go beyond the scope of the bill or are judged to be beyond the scope of the bill, the chair would likely rule them out of order, and they wouldn't have an opportunity. The motion of instruction was there in case I wanted to use it to move forward, to possibly bring it forward.

I'll tell you what the intention would be, had I used that motion of instruction. It would have been to open up, I think it's section 136, and move it from “secured” to “preferred”. That would have been the idea of that motion of instruction.

I guess the motion of instruction is still sitting on the table, but that's not my intention here today.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Well, he tabled this yesterday, but then on the order paper today, under number 26, under motions--I didn't bring it with me--it was specific to not going forward with Bill C-501 today, a standing order for us not to proceed with Bill C-501. Mr. Rafferty put it on the order paper.

Could he clarify that? He didn't speak to that in his comments.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

On a point of order, on the order paper this morning there was also a motion referring to the standing order and referencing not going forward with Bill C-501. Could Mr. Rafferty speak to what his intention is?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Bonjour à tous.

Welcome to the 50th meeting of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. Our intention today is to go clause-by-clause with Bill C-501, but I understand that Mr. Rafferty has a motion he wants to move right now. I'm certain there will be some discussion of that.

Mr. Rafferty.

Canadian Human Rights Act

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-481, a bill that would, among other things, eliminate the exception in the Canadian Human Rights Act that currently allows federal public sector and federally regulated private sector employers to have a mandatory retirement age for their employees.

Currently, only about 10%, or 840,000, of the Canadian workforce is subjected to mandatory retirement, and these individuals work within federally regulated sectors, such as transportation, telecommunications, the postal service and, of course, the armed forces, which we just heard about from the minister a moment ago.

Before going further, I want to make it clear that mandatory retirement provisions do not mean that people are not allowed to work beyond a certain age. Mandatory retirement provisions only apply to a specific workplace or pension plan.

When the government supports the lifting of mandatory retirement, it typically tells us that retirement is increasingly a lifestyle choice, as people are living longer and leading more active lives. Both the Governments of Ontario and Nova Scotia have in the past used similar language in support of the elimination of mandatory retirement rules.

However, we in the NDP know there is much more to the situation than this. It is a very simple argument that we are hearing so far. Saving for retirement has become increasingly difficult for Canadians. One-third of Canadian families have no retirement savings at all and two-thirds of Canadians do not have a company pension plan.

Equally troubling is the situation of those workers who are forced to retire at age 65 only to have to take another job immediately afterward at a fraction of the pay simply because they do not have a proper pension plan.

The NDP believes that older workers should have real retirement choices. For example, I think of the working conditions in the steel mills in my home town of Hamilton, the suffocating heat from the furnaces, the air thick with particulate matter and the long hours drenched in sweat. No one wishes to endure these circumstances any longer than they need to. When workers, such as those, choose to work past age 65, they do not do so because they want to. It is because they must. There is often a mortgage that remains to be paid, or college or university tuition for their children still waiting to be cleared.

For many, the freedom to work past age 65 is fast becoming an obligation to work as long as one is physically able. Eliminating the remaining mandatory retirement rules may be helpful to workers who lack a workplace pension but it will do nothing to guarantee that their income will be adequate. For New Democrats, income adequacy is the issue. We have called for an immediate increase to the GIS to lift seniors currently living in poverty out of it, and for a phased-in long-term doubling of the CPP.

The concern I have with respect to the issues of mandatory retirement is the suspicion that businesses push for it because doing so averts attention away from the inadequacies and inequities of Canada's retirement income system. Allowing people to work longer is for them a substitute for programs that would work to ensure that every Canadian has a solid and secure pension on which to retire. Working longer is, for the business class, what we might call an anti-poverty program for seniors, one that requires no contribution by way of taxes and one that leaves the onus on the individual. In other words, from their perspective, perfect indeed.

Meanwhile, these employees who support banning mandatory retirement do so largely because they are already financially secure and work in non-physically demanding jobs. Let us face it, people are living longer. It makes a certain amount of sense that individuals who hold non-physically demanding jobs and who work in safe and comfortable work environments might want to stay on the job longer than someone who, for instance, works pouring concrete all day.

Many of us here in this august chamber probably feel this way. As the member for Hamilton Mountain recently observed, this place does not exactly have a physical workload. It may be stressful to many but it is different from pouring concrete.

Let us be clear. Working longer is not nor will ever be a substitute for an adequate retirement income system.

We have had a number of debates in the House about the inadequacy of public pensions and the increasing incidence of solvency deficiencies of private pension plans. To date, the government has merely paid lip service to improving these pension systems. While they wait for the government to act, literally thousands of Canadians who have worked hard all their lives and who have played by the rules are finding it impossible to make ends meet on their meagre pension incomes.

Meanwhile, New Democrats have been calling for a suite of substantive reforms to improve the situation. As I mentioned before, we have called for an immediate increase to the guaranteed income supplement to lift all seniors out of poverty and for a phased in long term doubling of the CPP.

We would also like to see Canada's bankruptcy laws amended to ensure unfunded pension liabilities, that is, the moneys that companies promised but failed to contribute to workplace pension plans, are given the same status as unpaid wages and go to the front of the line of creditors for payment during bankruptcy or insolvency proceedings. Bill C-501 is being debated in the industry committee at this time and it is designed to do just this.

New Democrats are also calling for security for workplace pension plans through a mandatory pension insurance program paid for by the pension plan sponsors and guaranteeing pension payouts of up to $2,500 a month in the case of a plan failure, and also a national agency managed by the CPP investment board or a similar body to adopt pension plans of failed companies and continue to take advantage of market conditions and to maximize the payouts.

Members can think of our proposed pension insurance plan as being akin to the deposit insurance required of Canadian banks to guarantee the security of bank accounts for Canadians. The banks pay for that insurance. In this case, pension sponsors would be responsible for purchasing pension insurance to guarantee minimum pension payouts for their plan members.

In recent months, ex-employees of insolvent companies such as Fraser Papers or of course Nortel, while having to endure the indignity of taking a massive haircut to their pensions, have watched their American counterparts who work for the same companies located in the United States have their underfunded pension plans propped up by the United States pension benefits guarantee.

Now many of these pensioners will certainly have to work past 65, but they should not have had to do so simply because their government does not care enough to secure their pensions in a way that the great bastion of free market to the south of us has already done for its workers. A national pension insurance plan would ensure that Canadian pensioners are no longer left in the lurch like this while their American cousins are able to retire with a pension that they had been promised.

Getting back to the specific issue of Bill C-481, at this point let me say that I will be supporting sending the bill to committee. I very much look forward to hearing from Canadians when the bill is dealt with there.

I suspect that once in committee, we will hear from many sincere individuals who wish to continue their professional pursuits. Nevertheless, I still have serious reservations that eliminating mandatory retirement rules is in the interest of the people of my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. I believe there should be meaningful and comprehensive reforms to the retirement income system of Canada.

Forcing Canadians to work longer should not be just a way for the government to download some of its pension obligations. Working past 65 should be a real choice, one not driven by the fear of destitution but by the genuine desire to continue with a rewarding work life.

Statistics Act

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak about the bill today. Let me say right off the top that the rural parts of this country very much need a long form census. We need to know who lives here. We need to know where they live. We need to ensure that services like health care, education, employment assistance and so on are provided fairly and equally right across this country.

For urban areas of course the long form census is just as important, but I am going to keep my remarks mostly to my riding and to the issues that we face and why the long form census is so important to my part of northern Ontario.

Therefore I am very pleased to speak today on Bill C-568. It is an act to amend the Statistics Act in which we are dealing with the long form census.

The New Democratic Party is generally supportive of the bill because it seeks to reverse the ideologically based decision of the Conservative government to cancel the long form census. The bill also removes the punishment of imprisonment for a person convicted of providing false or misleading information.

While I am supportive of the bill and while my party is supportive of the bill, it is also important to note that I do not think it goes far enough. Bill C-583 introduced by my colleague from Windsor West goes one step further by enshrining into law the primacy of evidence-based decision making over political manoeuvring, the likes of which we have seen with the Conservative government.

To be clear, both elements of Bill C-568 are fully supported. For the record one more time, not a single Canadian has been imprisoned for failing to fill out the long form census. The imprisonment element should be removed right now.

However we need to go further by removing political interference from Statistics Canada's ability to do its job and provide an accurate picture of our country. The Chief Statistician must be able to do his or her job in an environment free of political meddling by an ideological government intent on suppressing evidence and information that contradicts, in this case, the narrow Conservative agenda.

We can just imagine the outrage from the national and international community if the government were to meddle in the independence of the Bank of Canada, for example. It would not be tolerated.

Therefore why should we accept the government's heavy-handedness when it comes to interfering with our Chief Statistician in his or her ability to do the job?

Hundreds of individuals, organizations, businesses and governments coast to coast raised the alarm bells because of the terrible decision to cancel the long form census. Despite the unsubstantiated claims by Conservative MPs about mythical complaints about the intrusiveness of the long form census, we know that the majority of citizens support and understand the need for the long form census.

Losing the long form census will have a detrimental impact on our communities in Thunder Bay—Rainy River. Let us just look at the first nations communities for example. There are 10 first nations in Thunder Bay—Rainy River. While they are connected by the road system, some are very far away from the main road, and it is important to have an accurate picture.

If we do not have a long form census that asks the kinds of questions that it does, we may not know what is going on in these isolated communities.

For example, without a long form census we would not know that the Couchiching First Nation, as of this past September, had 22 students who had graduated from high school but did not have the ability to go on to post-secondary education because the funding was not there.

We would also not know that in that same community last year it sent its very first student to medical school. It had its first PhD. return to the community.

Here we are making advances right across my riding and I would suggest that is duplicated right across the country.

Just when first nations are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, particularly as far as education is concerned, the taps get turned off. Without a long form census, we do not know and we will not know that is happening. It is important for all of our communities to have the input into the long form census to protect them and to let all Canadians know, to give all Canadians a snapshot of what is going on in those communities.

When we see the importance of the long form census, is it any wonder that the government was taken to court on the issue? It seems as if the government is trying everything, making relentless efforts to shut down any source of credible data that provides any sort of objective evidence necessary for developing good public policy.

A short while ago on Parliament Hill, parliamentarians and members of Canada's very professional public service were invited to a special panel discussion on a very timely topic, evidence versus ideology of Canadian public policy. The event was sponsored by the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, the Association of Canadian Financial Officers and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.

The event aimed to launch a public debate regarding the current state and possible future of evidence-based policy making in Canada. There were a number of distinguished speakers on the panel, and the discussion was fascinating because these panellists and participants acknowledged that there has always been a role for ideology in public policy. However, they noted that in the past two years we have seen the emergence of a worrisome pattern.

First, the government gagged public servants and fired others who dared to disagree with it or give it policy recommendations that did not fit into its ideologically driven agenda.

Second, the government cancelled surveys and the long form census to ensure that statisticians, economists, academics and other professionals did not have access to objective data that provided damning evidence of the government's policy failures.

I am just guessing, but I suppose the object is to put it all into the private domain and let private companies do the work of the long form census. They do sometimes. For example earlier this week there was a BDO Dunwoody study about my pension protection bill, Bill C-501. BDO Dunwoody asked CEOs from across Canada what they thought of the bill. More than half of the CEOs who replied said it is a good bill and Parliament should move it ahead. Those are the kinds of things that the government should be finding out about legislation that happens in this place.

I fear that the Conservative government is dragging the country backward, and a clear majority of Canadians are saying, “No, you cannot drag us backward”. A majority of parliamentarians in the House support restoring the long form census, protecting the professional role of Canada's Chief Statistician and removing the threat of imprisonment in the act. Yet the minority continues to thumb its nose at the majority will of Parliament, an insult to democracy, an insult to this place itself.

Bill C-568 is specific to the government's decision to cancel the long form census. I believe the House needs to have a wider debate about the government's treatment of public servants; its setting of public policy based on belief, not public interest; its rejection of evidence-based public policy; its attempt to shut down public access to objective data; and its attempt to stop credible analysis of its failed policies. This will not work. We are on to the Conservatives, and so are Canadians.

I offer my party's support for the bill and urge the House to bring other necessary changes to protect our professional public service from the kind of pervasive political interference by ministers and their political staff. We need to end this trend and we need to do it quickly before we are dragged any—