Bill C-27 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985

This enactment amends the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985 to provide a framework for the establishment, administration and supervision of target benefit plans. It also amends the Act to permit pension plan administrators to purchase immediate or deferred life annuities for former members or survivors so as to satisfy an obligation to provide pension benefits if the obligation arises from a defined benefit provision.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, “cornucopia” is another good one.

I asked where the accountability is. Indeed, the witnesses should be compelled to come before the committee to provide Canadians with the documents and the answers they seek. Since my first intervention, I have not gotten a satisfactory response to the question I asked: Where is the accountability? I will therefore continue along in the similar line of questioning.

In the case of the green slush fund, $400 million was paid out to Liberal insiders. The bigger mind-boggling number to me is that it was through 186 cases of conflicts of interest, a number that came from a sampling by the Auditor General. I wonder how many Canadian families could be fed with $400 million. It is hard to wrap one's head around a number so big, and around so much corruption.

According to another member's intervention in this place, $400 million is equivalent to the annual tax filings of 22,000 Canadian families, all to go to fund Liberal insider corruption. According to a recent RBC study, the average Canadian family of four now spends $1,227 a month on food, just under $15,000 a year. The math would suggest that $400 million would feed over 27,000 families per year, which is about 108,843 Canadians. Please do not misunderstand me. The role of government is to create the fiscal and societal climate where powerful paycheques allow Canadians to feed themselves; it should not have to be the role of government to directly feed Canadians.

Members get my point. I am trying to make the big numbers, which are so hard for many of us to wrap our heads around, relatable in order to indicate exactly the size of the issue we are dealing with and the amount of the gross misuse of taxpayer money. It is simply not acceptable. Where is the accountability?

In speaking for 20 minutes two weeks ago, I did not have enough time to go through the full list of scandals, corruptions and conflicts of interest. I will continue in that vein today.

I did comment last time on the Prime Minister's removal of the only indigenous woman ever to serve as a justice minister and Attorney General for Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould. She was removed because she would not be pressured by him to thwart the rule of law in Canada to help the PM's friends at SNC-Lavalin. The former minister lost her job because she stood up for what her oath of office required her to do. She was accountable, which is the principle that everyone is subject to the law, regardless of their relationship with the Prime Minister of Canada.

I also spoke about one of several Bill Morneau scandals, including Bill C-27. When the bill was tabled in the House of Commons, the value of Morneau Shepell shares increased dramatically. Coincidentally, Minister Morneau held 21 million dollars' worth of shares.

I also mentioned the David Lametti scandal, yet another case of Liberal disregard for the rule of law in Canada. The former attorney general cancelled the verdict of first-degree murder against Jacques Delisle, a former judge, even though all the legal experts were against this decision.

Who can forget the then minister of public works, whose husband sat on LifeLabs board as a director while the company was awarded COVID testing contracts totalling $68.2 million? What is the value of that in today's groceries? It could feed 18,470 plus people. Again I ask, where is the accountability?

I mentioned Scott Brison's attempt to benefit from his and his husband's ties to Irving Shipbuilding by trying to block a shipyard contract in favour of Irving away from Davie. In the process, the Liberals and Mr. Brison tried to frame multi-decorated Vice-Admiral Mark Norman and charge him with breach of trust. He was exonerated of all those charges, but not before his military career was destroyed. The whole sordid affair was unconscionable. Where is the accountability?

Former minister Navdeep Bains was also mentioned in my previous speech with his telecom windfall. As the former minister of innovation, science and industry, he pledged to deliver government support and that they would demand the big three telecoms, which are Bell, Rogers and Telus, to lower their prices by 25%. Now, Mr. Bains sits as the chief corporate affairs officer at Rogers and is receiving a six-figure salary. Again, there is no accountability, and for Canadians, there are higher cell phone bills. In many cases, Canadians' mobile data plans cost 200 times more than the cheapest ones in other countries, according to a recent Toronto Star report. I do not know about other members' cell phone bills, but mine has not gone down.

Of course, no scandal chronicle would be complete without mention of the WE Charity scandal and the Trudeau family bonanza paydays totalling $482,000. Doing the math, that amount would buy 128 Canadians groceries for a year. I guess that is okay because I am sure Margaret, Sacha and Sophie needed the money for groceries.

I would have been negligent in my previous intervention if I had not touched upon the notorious arrive scam and GC Strategies incident. That was the Liberal-friendly company that charged $60 million for an app that could have cost $80,000. Again, there is not much accountability. If my calculator is correct, that would be the equivalent of groceries for 16,300 Canadians for an entire year.

What about the Prime Minister's Christmas vacation on the Aga Khan's island and the subsequent $50 million of federal funding that flowed to that foundation, which is what it has received since 2016?

The Prime Minister also invited a convicted terrorist, Jaspal Atwal to dinner when he was in India with his family, and he ensured the feast was prepared by his own celebrity chef, who was flown in from Vancouver. He embarrassingly played Mr. Dressup with an insensitive overuse of Indian clothing. That scandal cost Canadians another $1.66 million, or the equivalent of the annual food bill for 451 Canadians. There was no accountability for that fiasco. Once again, Canadians were left embarrassed and angry, or perhaps hangry.

The Ethics Commissioner found that the Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade and Economic Development also broke ethics rules when she doled out just under $17,000 in a contract to a friend. That is about one family's worth of annual groceries. I am sure we all know of families that could use that money.

Now on to the scandals that I did not get to last time. I did not have time to describe the Julie Payette fiasco. The Prime Minister ignored the independent process put in place by the previous government to vet potential Governors General, as he thought he was smarter and could do it better himself. He picked his own. We know how that turned out, which was a disgrace to both the Governor General's staff and to the institution.

What about the Minister of National Defence's interference in the Nova Scotia shooting tragedy? He pressured RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki to publicly release information about the specific firearms used in the shooting in order to advance the federal government's misguided gun control legislation.

These are ones I did not get to last time. I am just getting to them now. That is not to mention, following the resignation of the then ethics commissioner Mario Dion, due to overwork, I believe, the Liberal government decided to appoint Martine Richard, the sister-in-law of the current public safety minister, to replace him. Does this sound like nepotism to anyone? Again, where is the accountability?

Under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, the sponsorship scandal may have been the spark that ignited the grand-scale Liberal penchant for lining their own pockets and those of their friends. Unfortunately, it was not the last. The Liberals and their buddies have discovered that their corruption is inflation-proof when it comes to padding their own personal fortunes. Therefore, here we are today.

After the documents for the SDTC scandal, the green slush fund, are finally handed over, Conservatives will raise concerns over the member from Edmonton Centre's company receiving over $120 million in government grants and contracts, including when he was minister. Although the minister has denied any wrongdoing, he went so far as to say text messages referring to a “Randy” uncovered during the committee hearing last summer, was not him, but, indeed, “another Randy”. The evidence tells a different story.

New text messages indicate that the member in question was in cabinet at the time and, at one point, the texts between the business partner and his client referred to a “Randy” being in Vancouver on September 6, 2022. We know that the member for Edmonton Centre was attending the Liberal government's cabinet retreat in the same city. Furthermore, Global News reported that the minister's former business partner was texting a “Randy” about deals involving a half-million dollar payment. Subsequently, that same business partner admitted that he had lied to Global News about the identity of the “other Randy”, confirming that it was, indeed, the member for Edmonton Centre who he was referring to in those now infamous text messages. However, the minister had the audacity to testify that the “Randy” referenced in those texts is not him, but another Randy, who just happened to work at the company he had a 50% ownership stake in.

At the committee hearing, his business partner did come clean and testified that, indeed, there is only one Randy who ever worked at the company, and it was the minister himself. I guess he thought better than to stand by his original statement when he learned that section 132 of the Criminal Code of Canada states, “Every one who commits perjury is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.” Where is the accountability for the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages? Where is the ministerial accountability? Where is ministerial integrity?

Who can forget the Frank Baylis scandal? Frank Baylis left politics after only one term as an MP and was part of a consortium of companies that received $237 million to provide 10,000 ventilators in the spring of 2020. It sounds eerily similar to the situation of Navdeep Bains. When will Canadians find accountability restored again in their government? I can tell members: It will be when they elect a common-sense Conservative government. That is when.

Now questions are arising about whether taxpayers are going to be funding one of the companies that Mark Carney works for days after he was announced as an adviser to the Prime Minister. As a former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, on paper, he seems to be the perfect fit as a financial adviser to the PM. Unfortunately, it appears that he is cut from the same cloth when it comes to financial ethics, or lack thereof. What should come as no surprise, a potential conflict of interest has come in for Mr. Carney and his company, Brookfield, which could involve billions of taxpayer dollars.

I am moving on from millions of dollars now to talk about billions of taxpayer dollars. The Globe and Mail reported that the proposal floating around Bay Street and the halls of Parliament would see Brookfield Asset Management create a $50-billion investment vehicle, with $10 billion of that to be paid for by Canadian taxpayers, and members guessed it, Mark Carney is the chair of the board for Brookfield. He holds the title head of transition investing at Brookfield.

How much is $10 billion? How do we wrap our heads around understanding how much $10 billion is? It is the equivalent of 689,163 Canadian families' groceries for a year. Even that is a number too big, and I cannot fully fathom how it would impact Canadians if this were to come about. It is simply unacceptable that carbon tax Carney has been given the power by the Prime Minister to offer him advice on a company in which he holds $1 million in stock options. Why is there no conflict of interest screen being applied?

If the Prime Minister were to grant Brookfield's request, does that not beg the question of how much money Mark Carney would stand to personally profit. The Financial Post reported that Brookfield immediately began lobbying the government for this money after the Deputy Prime Minister created a task force in last spring's budget to redirect Canadian pension fund investments. This was of course led by the former governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz.

What we do not know is if Mark Carney personally put efforts into pushing this through, as he refused to register as a lobbyist. The Prime Minister protected carbon tax Carney by appointing him to a position in which he does not have to declare his conflicts of interest. Every day, more and new questions emerge.

As mentioned last September, Carney's close friend, who serves as the CEO of Telesat, Daniel Goldberg, received $2.1 billion in taxpayer loans to build a broadband network that other firms could have delivered at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers. Despite Carney's glaring conflict of interest, both the NDP and the Liberals decided to protect him from answering questions at the House of Commons committee.

I ask my colleagues down the way why it is that NDP members have sold their souls to their Liberal partners and then ripped up the deal, and now they are saying they will sell them on a case-by-case basis. have they been caught protecting their own again? I do not know. Why can we not have transparency? The injustice never ends. The only way it would end would be after the next election, when Canadians would be able to take back their paycheques from the corrupt government.

To summarize, I have spoken to about 17 scandals that show the Prime Minister of Canada views the government and the government's treasury as his own personal slush fund, and that of his cabinet and their close friends, all to be used to improve their personal fortunes.

The lack of accountability starts with the Prime Minister, and this disease and corruption seems to pervade this cabinet. The member for Edmonton Centre followed the lead of the Prime Minister and his colleagues by stepping up to gorge himself at the illicit Liberal banquet table. Will the real Randy please step up and take responsibility?

We need change and accountability, and we need the kind of leadership that shows Canadian people that the government serves them and not the other way around. We need the kind of leadership offered by the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition and a country where its citizens can both heat and eat. That government will only be found in one place, and that is with common-sense Conservatives, who presently sit on this side of the House. We will turn the Liberal hurt into the hope that Canadians need by bringing home a country where hard work pays off members's homes, my home and our homes. Let us bring it home.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour and a pleasure to bring your sister-in-law's voice to the chamber, along with the voices of all the other constituents from Chatham-Kent—Leamington.

The Speaker has made a ruling that House business must be suspended until the government hands over all documents related to the SDTC scandal to the RCMP. The Auditor General of Canada found that the Prime Minister had turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal insiders, with $400 million paid out to them. There was a total of 186 cases of conflict of interest, an astounding number.

I will be asking this more than once: Where is the accountability? The Auditor General made it clear that the blame for this scandal falls on the industry minister, who “did not sufficiently monitor” the contracts given to Liberal insiders.

A July article in the National Post reads: “The former chairperson of a scandal-plagued clean tech fund...was found to have ‘improperly furthered’ the interests of companies she was associated with by failing to recuse herself from the board’s funding decisions, according to the ethics commissioner’s latest report.”

It goes on:

...Annette Verschuren resigned as the president of the board of directors of Sustainable Development Technology Canada...late last year when it was announced that she was the subject of an ethics investigation.... [E]thics commissioner Konrad van Finckenstein found that Verschuren “failed to comply” with some provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act....

She resigned, but the industry minister did not follow suit; he announced that he would not resign. Why was it appropriate for Ms. Verschuren to resign but inappropriate for the minister to do the same?

The previous speaker, my colleague, referenced ministerial accountability. Where is it? This brings back some memories of the sponsorship scandal. Members may recall that the year was 1996 when the Liberals founded the sponsorship program to promote federalism in Quebec. Two Auditor General reports found that the Liberals, under Jean Chrétien, had overseen the spending of $250 million through the sponsorship program between 1997 and 2001. Of those funds, $100 million was redirected to the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party. The scandal led Canadians to vote out the Liberals for the next decade, in favour of Conservatives, who could be trusted with the public purse strings.

Now history is repeating itself. As the early twentieth-century writer and philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It seems that the government has forgotten the past.

Let us fast-forward to today. Here we are once again. Apparently the Liberals feel that they are “entitled to [their] entitlements”, a phrase infamously coined by former cabinet minister David Dingwall. The scandals are numerous and mounting. What I am incredulous about is that, over the past nine years, there has been no accountability from the top. Again, I reference ministerial, or even higher, accountability.

The Prime Minister has thrown those who did not succumb to his will under the bus. Let us think of the Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould and the Hon. Dr. Jane Philpott. However, he himself has not taken any responsibility for what is arguably the most scandal-plagued and corrupt government in recent Canadian political history. I have a laundry list of Liberal scandals to validate my point. I only have 20 minutes, but I am going to take a crack at touching upon just a few of the conflicts of interest and corruption cases here.

Again, I am going to ask this: Where is the accountability? In 2020, a firm in the riding of the then minister of public services and procurement was paid $150 million for COVID-19 vaccines that were never delivered. Medicago was that firm, and it received $173 million in research money, for a total of $323 million in federal aid. Medicago was to build a vaccine factory, but that never transpired. Once again, the Liberals shut down any investigation into why taxpayers paid such an amount and received nothing in return. Unfortunately, this is an all-too-common pattern for the government.

Bill Morneau is another former minister who was scandal-prone. He began his political career by violating the Elections Act, for which he was fined. He participated in a series of “department-supported events” in his official capacity as finance minister during the pre-election period for the 2019 election. This “caused the expenses related to those events to benefit the [Liberal Party of Canada]”. This is the same minister who forgot to declare that he had a villa in France. I am to address all questions through the Speaker, so Mr. Speaker, have you ever forgotten a house?

Mr. Morneau also sponsored Bill C-27, which just happened to increase the value of pensions sold by the minister's company Morneau Shepell. When the bill was tabled in the House of Commons, the value of Morneau Shepell shares jumped. Coincidentally, the Minister Morneau held 21 million dollars' worth of those shares. Conflict of interest, anyone? Again, I reiterate, where is the accountability?

CBC reported that when former minister David Lametti left cabinet, many people were wondering why. We have since learned that the former attorney general cancelled a verdict of first-degree murder against Jacques Delisle, a former judge, even though all legal experts were against this decision. Mr. Lametti and the government refused to answer why he had done that, even though Delisle later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

I am not done yet. In fact, I am just getting started.

The disregard and breaches of ethics kept on coming. In December 2022, the Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade and Economic Development of Canada was found guilty by the Ethics Commissioner of giving contracts to her best friend.

Who can forget, of course, the case of the other Randy? Last July, the ethics committee uncovered text messages showing that the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages continued to direct his company while he was minister. In another sheer coincidence, his company received nearly $120 million in government grants and contracts. Again, conflict of interest, anyone? Where is the accountability? The minister testified that the Randy referenced in these texts was not him, but another Randy who just happened to work at the company that he had a 50% ownership stake in. At the following committee hearing, his business partner testified that, really, only one Randy ever worked at this company and that was the minister.

Friends and family of Liberal cabinet ministers have also inappropriately benefited from their ethical lapses. The Minister of Transport failed to report, as required under the Conflict of Interest Act, that her husband John Knowlton, a director at LifeLabs, was among several businesses awarded COVID-testing contracts, as confirmed by the health minister. Blacklock's reported that LifeLabs received COVID-testing contracts worth $66,307,424 on June 23 and a separate $1.9-million contract on August 20 when the transport minister was the minister of public works. It is another case of “nothing to see here, folks”. Conflict of interest, anyone? Where is the accountability?

Who can forget Scott Brison when he was President of the Treasury Board? He was trying to block the approval for a navy supply ship that was being built at Davie shipyard in favour of the powerful Irving shipyard. He used to chair one of the investment firms as his spouse sat on the board of directors. He then worked with the government to have Vice-Admiral Norman charged with a breach of trust before Vice-Admiral Norman was exonerated of all charges in 2019. Is there no limit to the lengths to which government members will go to to enrich the lives of themselves and of their friends?

I would be negligent if I failed to mention Navdeep Bains, whose name has come up in earlier interventions. He is another former Liberal cabinet minister. As minister of innovation, science and industry, he pledged that the government would demand that the big three, Bell Canada, Rogers Communications Canada and Telus Communications, would lower their prices by 25% in the next two years for cellphone plans that offer between two and six gigabytes of data. In April 2023, former minister Bains was appointed by Rogers to its executive leadership team. The hiring of Mr. Bains does raise concerns, especially in the light of the government's approval of the Rogers-Shaw merger. Did anyone on the government side of the House dare to question the blatant conflict of interest here? Where is the accountability?

Of course, no Liberal scandal chronicle would be complete without mentioning the SNC-Lavalin affair and the WE Charity scandal. I have previously mentioned how former ministers Wilson-Raybould and Philpott were victims of the government's corrupt behaviour. SNC-Lavalin was more than just breaching ethics rules.

The Prime Minister made a travesty of the separation of the power between his office and that of the Attorney General's office. The PM ignored the independence of the Attorney General to help his friends at SNC avoid criminal prosecution. In doing so, he orchestrated a campaign to pressure the Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to overrule the independent public prosecution. No one should be above the law, not even the Prime Minister.

Another infamous scandal was, of course, the WE Charity. This time, it was the Prime Minister's family who benefited greatly. Margaret Trudeau was paid approximately $250,000 for speaking at 28 events, while the Prime Minister's brother Alexandre spoke at eight events and received about $32,000. In testimony before MPs on July 28, Marc Kielburger said Sophie Grégoire Trudeau was reimbursed more than $200,000 in expenses for appearances at WE Charity events, and the WE Charity covered $41,000 in costs for Bill Morneau and his family in 2017 for trips to Ecuador and Kenya to review the organization's humanitarian work.

I would be remiss if I did not touch upon the notorious arrive scam and GC Strategies, the Liberal-friendly company that charged at least $60 million for the app, which was to have cost $80,000. To add insult to injury, 76% of the contractors did zero work on the app. Once again, the Canadian taxpayer footed the bill with zero accountability on behalf of the government.

I am still not done. Unbelievably, there are more illicit Liberal practices to come.

Let us talk about the Prime Minister's Christmas vacation at the Aga Khan's island and the subsequent $50 million in federal funding the Aga Khan Foundation has received since 2016 from the government. The vacation lasted until January 4, 2017, eight days in total. It was later disclosed that the government expenditures for the trip had amounted to $215,000. The Prime Minister then adopted the position that he and the Aga Khan were close friends, and the trip was of a more personal nature, even though they had not seen each other in 30 years.

It is more of the “entitled to my entitlements” philosophy, I guess.

The Prime Minister has a penchant for luxurious vacations. Most Canadians would agree he is justified in taking a vacation; I certainly do. However, I do not believe they would agree he should satisfy his champagne tastes on the taxpayers' dime. Although it took some persistent digging through access to information, the PMO finally admitted it was the Prime Minister and his wife who stayed in a $6,000-per-night hotel suite while attending the funeral for our sovereign Queen Elizabeth II.

The stay at the Corinthia London hotel became just another shameful display of a lack of respect for average Canadians by billing them an astounding $400,000. The Prime Minister and his office were not forthcoming with these details. Witness what we are doing here today and for the past week. Again, it is an abhorrent lack of accountability.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the disastrous trip to India by Canada's first family. As The Economic Times reported at the time, “Trudeau’s time in India was criticised for its lack of official business, not to mention—”

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I'm listening to them. It's important to do so.

As you know, however, there are quite a few priorities to deal with at the same time. For example, you've just mentioned bills C‑27 and C‑34.

It is of course important to reform the Copyright Act. I'm working on that with my colleague, heritage minister Rodriguez. I listened to what the industry had to say. I also heard from the universities.

It's definitely one of our priorities. We're going to continue to work with the industry. I have a great deal of respect for creators. They make an important contribution. We need to be there for them and we are going to continue to do just that.

Pension Protection Act

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here, or least to be with the House virtually. It is always an honour to rise on behalf of the good people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

I would like to thank the member for Sarnia—Lambton for her leadership in this Parliament on this issue. God knows we need these issues brought up because, in some cases, the issue around pension reform and the need to resolve it is long standing and has happened over periods, not just of governments, but of decades.

We have two issues in this particular space when it relates to pensions. One is legacy pensions, which is broadly what we are dealing with today. The other one is new ones, meaning that fewer companies are deciding to use the standard defined benefit pension plan. I am just going to take a quick moment to share a few reasons why that is.

Obviously the business environment has changed. Technologies have come in. We have seen new business models operating that challenge the status quo and have created all sorts of issues for legacy businesses as technology continues to change things.

The government tried to deal with this by bringing in Bill C-27 in its first mandate, but that particular bill went nowhere because the government probably did not do its homework and got hung up over one particular area that people were contesting around conversion, the conversion of a defined benefit to a target pension plan.

The reason why I raise this issue is because the government has failed when it comes to addressing both legacy issues, as well as trying to invoke new methods for bringing in benefits, whether they be a target-based benefit or a defined benefit. If we want to see more people having secure retirements, then that is part of the solution. I do not think the government has done a very good job, which brings me back to legacy issues.

Defined benefit pensions, those are usually handled, most of the time, by the companies themselves. There is no legislation that says that when they are in a surplus position, who actually owns that. Is it the actual company or is it the pensioners or the current workers? That problem, unfortunately, does not happen that often because it is very seldom that these particular private, defined benefits are running at a surplus. In fact, it is the opposite.

We have seen cases such as Sears. I represent a riding that has a large percentage of seniors. They rely on that income. It breaks one's heart when one finds out that they are no longer going to be receiving the benefit they paid into.

There has been inaction on this by the Liberal government since it came into office, but I would not put it all on them. If we just look to those who are fortunate enough to have a pension program, and it is usually in the public sector, the answer has already been given by successive governments over the decades. If there is a shortfall, the taxpayer will fill that gap. However, for these private pensions, that has not been answered.

Unfortunately, we have seen recessions. We have seen where stock markets have been hit hard, in the early 2000s, obviously in the financial crisis in 2008-09, and the subsequent great recession, and now we are looking at where there is a lot of talk about a possible recession. This is the worst time to be bringing these things up.

When these issues happen, when scarcity is abound, this is where everyone tightens up and demands to have what they are owed. The member for Sarnia—Lambton has been trying, struggling through the process of a private member's bill, working through committee, to put a new balance in place that would at least address this.

We do have the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. Bill C-27 that I referred to earlier did talk about having more rules and oversight in place that would force new target benefits to come up with plans to bring themselves back into a surplus position when there is a drop.

That is really important because joint-sponsored pension plans often have these things where they will, on a temporary basis, cut some secondary benefits to smooth things out, and once the plan comes back into balance, then the regular benefits continue. Those kinds of tools, where a pension plan can smooth out those outflows to make sure there is always a plan to get back into surplus, work. It has been shown in joint-sponsored plans, and it could work in defined benefit programs as well, but the government has a responsibility to start the discussion.

Unfortunately, the government seems to have taken the opinion that, if one touches it, one has basically bought it. It has, so far, decided not to enter into this space since its retreat from Bill C-27. Again, this country deserves better. It deserves to have both certainty for the existing legacy pension plans out there in the federal space and, I believe, an overall discussion on provincial plans. So far, when it comes to that kind of discussion, successive ministers of finance, whether it be former minister Morneau, who is the minister no more, as I like to joke once in a while, or the current Minister of Finance, they have not made this a priority. Thus, this is where members of Parliament need to fill the gap.

The superpriority, although it is an essential process that has been pointed out by the Canadian public, where they feel that if the government cannot put in place a framework that assures them of that, then, by goodness, they should receive superpriority in the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act at the very end. It is an option that will have trade-offs in the corporate side, where it will make it in some cases harder for corporations to receive financing for their bonds. However, in the absence of better leadership by the government, members of Parliament have been forced to do this.

It is terrible that we have a government in office that votes down, or I should say denies, unanimous consent. Members of Parliament wanted to see the superpriority component of this bill included. For the Liberal government to continually say no and use whatever tools it can just shows the government is completely opposed to anything in this space. That is lamentable because ultimately it is Canadians who do not have an assured pension, such as public servants or most of us, if we are vested, do.

I would encourage the government to come clean. I would encourage Canadians to talk to their members of Parliament. Most of all, I would encourage the government to start taking this issue seriously, put forward consultations with both provincial governments and the Canadian public on how it intends to deal with legacy issues if it is not going to go forward with the Bill C-228 provisions presented by the good member for Sarnia—Lambton.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak today and wish all of my colleagues a good day.

Employment Insurance Act

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-265, introduced by the member for Salaberry—Suroît.

The bill focuses on EI sickness benefits, which have been capped at 15 weeks since the 1970s, whereas EI regular benefits can last up to 26, or even 50, weeks.

This is not a new issue. I heard about it from Marie-Hélène Dubé, a Rivière-du-Loup resident who contacted me about it. I hear about this issue quite regularly from my constituents. Marie-Hélène Dubé is an acquaintance of mine. Over the years, I have spoken with her several times about the topic we are debating today.

Nearly four years ago, in 2018, I presented a resolution at my party's general council, held in Saint-Hyacinthe, to extend EI benefits in the case of serious illness. This resolution was adopted the members of my party. Last month, I also got this resolution passed by all party members at the Conservative convention, which was held virtually earlier this year.

All parties in the House want to address this issue. The Liberals are sadly the only ones dragging their feet.

I remind members that the Liberal government has been in power since October 2019. It had a majority for the first four years and has remained in power for another year and a half with the help of other opposition parties. So far, the Liberal government has not done anything to extend EI sickness benefits, and I do not see why.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a study two years ago in April 2019, estimating the cost of extending sickness benefits from 15 weeks to 50. According to this study, it would cost between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion a year. That may seem like a lot, but it is important to know that the EI program is first and foremost supposed to be independent and self-sustaining. It is funded through premiums paid by workers and employers, which are adjusted periodically based on the claim rate.

In 2019, the contribution rate for workers was $1.62 per $100 of insurable earnings to a maximum of $56,300 a year. The employer pays 140% of that amount, or $2.27 per $100 of insurable earnings. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that extending sickness benefits would cost 6¢ more per $100 earned by a worker. For someone who earns $35,000 a year, that is an increase of $21 a year or $1.75 a month. For someone who has reached or exceeded the maximum insurable earnings of $56,300, the proposed change would cost $33.78 a year or $2.81 a month. If we asked people whether they were prepared to pay between $1.75 and $2.81 a month for peace of mind and access to EI sickness benefits if they were to get cancer or need heart surgery, for example, it is very clear that the answer would be yes.

Balance protection insurance for credit cards and credit disability insurance on car loans both cost far more than 0.06%. They usually cost around 1% of the monthly balance. That amount is 20 times higher than the small increase we are talking about here to extend EI sickness benefits from 15 weeks to 50.

We might well wonder if that is why the Liberals are reluctant to offer EI sickness benefits for longer than 15 weeks. Have insurance companies lobbied the government because they do not want this safety net to make their financial products less attractive?

Let us remember the incestuous relationship between the Liberal government and major financial institutions, which was an issue when the Liberals introduced Bill C-27 in the previous Parliament. That bill proposed legislative amendments to pension standards that would have benefited Morneau Shepell, the family-owned investment company previously run by Bill Morneau, the former finance minister.

As a Conservative, I am very wary of any new tax or government directive that could make it harder for Canada's small and medium-sized businesses to compete. As the owner of a business with about 30 employees, I am all the more wary considering the especially difficult year all SMEs have had. I am here to help them get through the pandemic that we will have to continue grappling with for the next few months, or maybe even more than a year. However, I do not think that contributing an extra $29 or $47 per year per employee will bankrupt my business.

My employees are important to me, and I would love for them to have this lifeline to count on in case they ever have to face such a difficult struggle.

On this subject, I would not accuse the government of overspending. Why, then, are we still here, six and a half years after the Liberals took office? They still have not addressed this issue. The Liberals had a chance to include parts of Bill C-265 in their own Bill C-24, but they decided against it. To top it all off, we learned last week that the government has decided to refuse royal recommendation for Bill C-265, so its odds of being passed by the next election are slim.

Is this what the Liberals call co-operation with the opposition parties? It sounds more like “my way or the highway”. It appears as though they want to call an election right away, so that the Prime Minister can run as a great saviour and promise, for a third time, to increase the number of weeks of EI benefits for serious illnesses, when he had every opportunity to get it done sooner.

A few weeks ago, I asked the government whether it was going to extend EI sickness benefits from 15 to 50 weeks, as set out in the motion the House of Commons passed in February 2020. The government responded that it would first extend this benefit period to 30 weeks.

That is great, but when? Will it be in the budget? We shall see this afternoon. Can the government tell us the difference in cost between 30 and 50 weeks? I remind the House that the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that extending these benefits from 15 to 50 weeks would cost 6¢ for every $100. This figure is not for 30 weeks, but perhaps the government and the Department of Finance did their own assessment.

What is the difference in cost between 15 and 30 weeks? What would be the difference in cost between 30 and 50 weeks? Is the government seriously obstructing Bill C-265 to save 2¢ or 3¢? The Liberal member who will be speaking next has a few minutes to ask me questions. I would like him to start by answering mine.

Beyond the figures I just cited, Marie-Hélène Dubé and Émilie Sansfaçon were extremely resilient, and in the case of Ms. Sansfaçon, to the very end. Ms. Dubé went through three cancer diagnoses in the last 10 years. Earlier I heard my Liberal colleague note that the government has made changes related to COVID-19. I am glad that it did that, with our support, but here we are talking about a recurring thing and not something sporadic in connection with a pandemic. As mentioned by my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît, these are legislative amendments that do not happen often. The Employment Insurance Act has not changed since the 1970s and is no longer adequate. As my Liberal colleague aptly put it earlier, we must absolutely overhaul this legislation to adapt to today's realities.

I could go on for several more minutes, but the reality is that many businesses are struggling to find employees. That is the case in my riding right now. Unfortunately, when some get sick they not only have the burden of their illness weighing on them, but they also bear the financial burden, which becomes an additional stressor and is very hard to bear for anyone going through these difficult times.

Some will say that the Conservatives refused to make these changes in the past. It is true, but the way things are changing we must take care of one another. As my colleague mentioned earlier, people who can take care of those who are sick are entitled to more benefits than the sick people themselves. That makes no sense. We must adapt these new realities to today's life. Clearly, the pandemic added another layer, and the reality is that these types of events primarily affect women.

I believe that we must absolutely support my colleague's bill, and I invite the Liberals to also support it.

Pensions

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, the second is a petition to withdraw Bill C-27 to protect defined benefit plans.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present a petition on behalf of many residents of Toronto, Hamilton, Guelph and Brantford, Ontario, joining their voices to the thousands of Canadians who have signed similar petitions. I would like to thank the B.C. Retired Teachers Association and the National Association of Federal Retirees for their advocacy in this work. All these petitioners point out that before the 2015 federal election, Canadians were clearly promised, in writing, that defined benefit plans would not be retroactively changed to target benefit plans. As the House knows, Bill C-27, tabled by the Minister of Finance, precisely permits this change. Therefore, the petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to withdraw Bill C-27, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act of 1985.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, today I am presenting two petitions from constituents in my riding of North Okanagan—Shuswap. Both of the petitions are calling on the government to withdraw Bill C-27, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table a petition signed by dozens of residents of New Westminster—Burnaby, Vancouver and Victoria, who add their names to the thousands of Canadians across the country asking the Government of Canada to withdraw Bill C-27, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985.

As these petitioners say, before the 2015 federal election, Canadians were promised that defined benefit plans would not be changed to target benefit plans, but Bill C-27 would effectively impact this. It is why the petitioners are calling for the withdrawal of the bill.

I would like to thank the BC Retired Teachers' Association, and particularly JoAnne and Dale Lauber, who have been instrumental in bringing this petition forward. They are present in the gallery today.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am here today on behalf of my colleague from Langley—Aldergrove, who is home fighting his battle with cancer. We wish him well today. I am sure he is watching.

I am presenting this petition with 13,740 signatures. The person who initiated it is with us today, Mr. Gerry Tiede. It calls on the Government of Canada to promote and protect earned pensions for all Canadians in the future, to withdraw Bill C-27, and to establish a national pension insurance program to ensure that seniors can live with financial security.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, moving a motion to extend the sitting hours of the House is not a great way to close out the last session of the 42nd Parliament of Canada. We are not opposed to working late every evening. We want to work and make progress on files.

Once again, we take issue with the means the government is using to get all members to work a little harder because the session is ending and these are the last days of this Parliament. The other items in the motion do not concern the extension of sitting hours. We take issue with the government's approach, which prevents the opposition from doing its job properly. It is handcuffing the opposition and moving the government's agenda along as quickly as possible, not based on what parliamentarians may have to say, but on what the government wants.

This is not new to us, given how the government has handled the legislative process throughout its mandate. The government has been unable to advance a decent legislative agenda. I am the opposition agriculture and agri-food critic. I spoke to my predecessors, and we have been waiting for the Minister of Agriculture to introduce a bill to improve the lives of Canadian farmers since my appointment two years ago.

When I look at all the agriculture documents and bills this government has introduced since it was elected in 2015, it is clear to me that the government has achieved nothing. Absolutely no legislation was proposed to improve the lives of Canadian farmers.

However, numerous bills were introduced. Now, the government is saying that the situation is urgent and that we must move quickly and pass this legislation. A number of bills were not passed by the government, and now time is of the essence.

Of all of the bills that were not passed, some never even moved forward. We have, for example, Bill C-5, introduced on February 5, 2016; Bill C-12, introduced on March 24, 2016; Bill C-27, introduced on October 19, 2016; Bill C-28, introduced on October 21, 2016; Bill C-32, introduced on November 15, 2016; and Bill C-33, introduced on November 24, 2016. The Liberals have had four years to move these bills forward.

All of a sudden, the government claims that these bills need to be passed urgently. After the vote this evening we will debate Bill C-81, which was introduced on June 20, 2018. It has been nearly a year. We are being told that this bill is urgent and must absolutely be passed, but the government was unable to bring it forward earlier.

If this is so urgent, why did the government not bring up this bill more regularly in the House? Why did we not talk about it on a regular basis? All of a sudden, we need to pass it quickly because the Liberals have realized that they are going to run out of time. The government was unable to manage the House. It was unable to give parliamentarians an opportunity to do their work and to speak about important bills. The Liberals have realized at the last minute that they have forgotten this and that. There is an election coming up in the fall and now parliamentarians have to do the work to pass this or that bill.

The government chose to impose late sittings on the House for 18 days while also moving a time allocation motion, which means that we will not even have the chance to talk about it for long. If we refer to the Standing Orders, the government could have extended sitting hours for the last 10 days of the session, as provided for in our normal parliamentary calendar. That is what it could have done, and it would have been entirely doable.

I would like to talk about one of the Standing Orders. Even though the standing order that governs the extension of sitting hours in June has been in effect since 1982, it is not used every year. In some cases, special orders were proposed and adopted instead, usually by unanimous consent.

Parliamentarians are here to represent the people in their ridings. According to the Standing Orders, anyone who wants to change the rules to move things along has to seek the unanimous consent of the House.

Unfortunately, this government does not really seem to care about unanimous consent. It does not really seem to care what the opposition thinks or has to say even though, just like MPs on government benches, we represent all the people of our ridings. The least the government could do, out of respect for Canadian voters, is respect people in opposition. We have a role to play.

Unfortunately, our role is not to agree all the time and say the government is doing a good job. On the contrary, our role is to try to point out its failings so it can improve. Basically, the opposition's role is to make the government better by pointing out its mistakes and bad decisions so the government can reflect on that and find better solutions for all Canadians. However, the government does not seem willing to take that into account.

On top of that, there are two opposition days left. I mentioned the negative effects of the motion. The government is proposing to extend the hours in the House, but what it failed to mention is that it is going to deny the opposition the opportunity to have two full opposition days to address situations that are very troubling to Canadians.

For instance, during a normal opposition day during which we might hear from a number of stakeholders, we could have talked about the canola crisis, which is affecting thousands of canola producers across Canada. This crisis, which involves China, is costing Canadian canola producers billions of dollars. For all members who have canola farmers among their constituents, it would have been an opportunity to express the concerns of their fellow citizens and farmers in their regions. Perhaps we could have convinced the government to take action, such as filing a complaint through the World Trade Organization to condemn China's actions or appointing an ambassador, for example. As peculiar as it may seem, Canada currently has no representative in China to speak with Chinese authorities.

We could have had such a debate here in the House.

The one thing that the members across the aisle seem to have forgotten is that members of the House are not the government. The government is the ministers, the cabinet members. In this chamber, people have the right to speak their minds in the hope of swaying the government.

It is true that the government is formed by the party with the most members elected to the House, but it is also up to backbench members of the ruling party to try to persuade their government and speak for the people they represent, such as the farmers in their ridings. Sadly, the members on that side of the House seem to be divorced from reality. They seem to be blind to the government's desire to crush Parliament, to crush the MPs who are trying to do a good job of representing the constituents of every riding. I think that is a real shame.

We have absolutely nothing against extending the sitting hours of the House, but if it is intended to cover up the government's mistakes and its inability to properly organize the work of the House, then I think that is disgraceful.

The government is using this kind of motion to not only make us work more, which, as I mentioned, we agree with, but also deprive us of our last remaining tools, like the voting marathons everyone remembers. We held those voting marathons to make the government realize it cannot do whatever it wants in the House of Commons. The House of Commons is not the tool of the government. This motion to extend the sitting hours also prevents us from using that tool, which was a powerful means for us to send the government a message.

After making such grand promises of transparency and openness, this government has failed spectacularly to deliver. Sadly, its latest motion on the rules of the House just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it has no respect for the work of the House. It saddens me to see a government ending its term on such a sour note.

Pensions

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, today I have two petitions to table in the House.

The first is largely from the members of the Comox Valley, who call on the government to withdraw Bill C-27. The concern is that prior to the 2015 federal election, Canadians were clearly promised. in writing. that the defined benefits plans, which have already been paid for by employees and pensioners, should not be retroactively changed into target benefit plans.

The petitioners are very passionate about this and call on the government to do the right thing and withdraw Bill C-27.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the people who signed this petition want to draw the government's attention to the fact that, before the 2015 election, the Liberals promised that the defined pension benefit plan that people had already contributed to would not be retroactively changed into a target benefit plan. However, that is exactly what the finance minister's Bill C-27 does.

The petitioners are calling on the government to withdraw this unfair bill.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise to present a petition on behalf of my constituents and other Canadians.

Petitioners are calling on the government to withdraw Bill C-27. They note that in the 2015 federal election, the Liberals promised Canadians in writing that defined benefit plans that have already been paid for by employees would not be retroactively changed into target benefit plans. Of course, after the election, the government changed that and Bill C-27 came into play.

Petitioners are calling on the government to withdraw the bill and to honour what it said it would do during the 2015 election.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise to present a petition to the House of Commons that calls for the withdrawal of Bill C-27, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985.

Bill C-27 tabled by the Minister of Finance precisely permits the change for defined benefits, therefore jeopardizing the retirement income security of Canadians who have negotiated defined benefit plans as a form of deferred wages.

The petitioners call on the government of Canada to withdraw Bill C-27, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985.