Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to join this debate on this piece of legislation. I would certainly like to go through not only some of the past and present issues but also some potential possibilities in the future. I hope my arguments will find ears that will listen and we can have a good debate about everything under the sun when it comes to the CPP.
I would first like to talk about the previous government. I know that there are fans of the previous government in this chamber, and I know that there are those who did not appreciate its approach. However, every government takes an approach for a reason. Sometimes it is built on the context of the ideology of the party. Sometimes it depends on the environment in which it operates. Sometimes it is about the long-term interests of the country.
This country is great, not just because of its political system but because often, as Canadians, we can set aside some of those differences to do what is right. I hope that in this Parliament, perhaps not on this issue but on others, we can find those points.
The previous government focused on the pooled registered pension plan, which was a way for individuals to put away money. It would have been fully portable across this great country, and the costs would have been low, because it was pooled together with other Canadians. The benefit of that approach was simply this. If people had extra money to contribute, instead of putting it against a mortgage, toward lowering debt, or toward saving for a new home, they would have a place to squirrel that money away for retirement. Because of its pooled nature, the cost of administering it would have been low. It would have had the benefit of the private sector running it. It would also have had the obvious benefit that if someone were to pass away, those benefits would instantly be passed on to a spouse or family member.
One of the great pitfalls of the Canada pension plan is that it is not fully transferable, and I will speak to that a bit further. While the government may say that it is not a tax but an investment, when I put money into a TFSA, if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, my wife would have full access to those funds. That is not the case with the Canada pension plan. It is the case with a registered savings plan, though.
Getting back to the pooled registered pension plan, even though every single province across this great country agreed with the concept that we would give more choice and allow people who wanted to save more, and it would have had lower costs and been fully portable, not every province followed through. I am happy to report that British Columbia did, and I appreciate the Government of British Columbia for doing so. However, many provinces, particularly Ontario, chose another path.
Although Ontario agreed, at the finance ministers' meeting, to the pooled registered pension plan, it instead decided to go on a crusade and create a totally separate pension plan solely for the province of Ontario.
We have heard all the issues with respect to the administration fees. We have heard that it spent millions of dollars trying to scope out the plan, advertise, and whatnot. That was all for naught, because we all know what happened. Instead of producing a pooled registered plan that would have had immediate pickup, because it had a lot of support from the business community and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which was very supportive of the concept because an employer could add to an employee's pension on a voluntary basis, unlike with the Canada pension plan, it convinced the new Liberal government, which listened to it, to bail it out by instead pushing for an enhanced Canada pension plan.
I am not opposed to pensions, and anyone who tries to say otherwise I think is being disingenuous. We all benefit when we all play on the same level playing field of facts. To say that any Conservative is against pensions because he or she is raising legitimate concerns about the process by which the government is going about it I do not think benefits this place at all.
Getting back to Ontario, a deal was made, the government pushed this agenda, and the provinces signed on for a variety of reasons. I would not begrudge anyone for that. However, I think it is important that when members of this place, regardless of party, raise the legitimate concerns they hear from their residents, we owe them at least the admission that they may have a point. We have heard some members talk about our wanting to kill the bill. We just want to be heard.
In fact, I am just going to make the point that many members of the Liberal Party have stood up today and said that this should go to committee. It is already at the finance committee. We already engaged in a pre-study. We have studied it for the last few days.
Why deny members of Parliament the ability to raise their voices if they are not a member of that committee? The gentleman opposite said earlier that we only have so much time. I agree, but this is a big piece of legislation, and hopefully I am going to point out some improvements to it.
That takes us to here, right now. Again, we have a bill before us, and there are some shortcomings in the bill. I am going to start first with survivor's benefits. Unfortunately, the government has chosen not to make changes to the survivor's benefit. I have had many people my riding, who in the situation of their life, were quite fortunate that both the husband and wife, the team so to speak, were able to put away a fair bit of money and always maxed out on their payments.
Unfortunately, life had a different plan. Instead of living out the rest of their time in the sunny Okanagan, one died because of a disease or other reason. The spouse—and a funny thing in my riding is that I have heard from more men than women—as the remaining spouse would get no survivor benefit, because they were already receiving the maximum allowed under the Canada pension plan, because they had maxed out their contribution.
What does that mean? That means that, of all the money that is set aside and people believe would go toward their family, in terms of benefits, if their spouse has also maxed out, they would receive nothing. Some people may have varying circumstances. One person I know had to sell the house in which they had planned to stay together. The reason they were able to keep up the house and were able to pay the taxes was that they both had a good income coming in, plus their CPP.
The government's new bill does not address this. I really hope we can find mechanisms so that this is evaluated by this place, and I think that would be suitable. Through a committee study might be optimal. I do think it should be done.
Second of all, we also heard from Prof. Tammy Schirle from Wilfrid Laurier University that there is an issue in terms of accountability and transparency with the working income tax benefit.
There is a provision in the CPP, this legislation, that allows someone who is a low-income earner a choice to be able to use the working income tax benefit as a way to offset their contributions. She has mentioned that perhaps that could be done by a different means. What happens is that it creates a bit of a gender inequity in how someone can apply for that, because only one spouse of a dual-income household can take advantage of that.
Therefore there has to be some negotiation. Instead of treating people on an individual basis, like all individuals who contribute to CPP—I make my own contributions and my wife, when she was working, would make her own—it actually treats them together, and there is some negotiating that goes on, which creates a gender inequity.
It also does not create the accountability, where the person can see clearly how much is going in and how much is going out. Perhaps, maybe like the GST rebate for low-income earners, which is given on a constant basis, that would be a better method to be able to give people their contributions back on a more regular basis, rather than once a year through the process right now.
Last, none of us—unless someone here can show it—expected that in 2008 there would be a financial crisis leading to a great recession. Economists, including our own government's economists, were not ready for that and had to make a lot of decisions on the fly. Fortunately, we had some fantastic leadership that understood how to weather the storm. As a country, we were able to come out of that recession quickly.
However, the past may not be the future. If we cannot predict these kinds of things, perhaps the finance minister should consider some method within the bill that, if enough provincial counterparts—along the lines of six out of 10 of the provinces and territories contributing, representing two-thirds of the population—ask for a deferment or even a pause to the schedule, perhaps that is something we should consider.
In the heat of the moment when there are difficulties it is better to know we have options and flexibility.
I hope I have been able to present not only some of the challenges here but some of the opportunities that members on both sides can consider, and hopefully that will make for a better debate.
