Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd also like to thank all the committee members.
I'm happy to be here today to tell you about my bill on workers' pensions.
Over the last 10 years, there have been numerous efforts in the Senate and in almost all parties in the House to find a way to protect the pensions of those workers who have worked their whole lives when, unfortunately, at the end of their careers, a company goes bankrupt and they don't get, in some cases, very many pennies on the dollar, or sometimes get no severance.
I looked at all the previous bills that had been brought forward. I looked to the parts that people could agree on, cherry-picked all those parts and put them together in Bill C-228. Then I added what I thought were my own brilliant ideas; we'll talk about whether they are or not.
That's where this came from. We know the history of all the companies—Eaton's, Sears, Nortel, Indalex, Grant Forest Products and so many more—that have gone bankrupt. Basically, a number of things were brought forward in the House. I see that my colleague Marilène Gill is here at committee today. She had a bill in the last Parliament that talked about making sure that pensions were paid out in priority, before large creditors. That went to the INDU committee and was very thoroughly studied, with a lot of witnesses. We were in a position where, with some minor changes, that thing would pass, but an election was called. I'm glad to be able to incorporate her great ideas into this.
There was a bill from Erin O'Toole. One of the good features in that bill was the tabling of a report on the solvency of funds to the House of Commons every year. This is not additional work. Currently there is a report that is done on the solvency of federally regulated funds, but it goes to the superintendent of finance. It's not clear what, if anything, is actually done to remediate these situations.
My bill will require the tabling of this in the House every year for greater transparency so that we can see where the troubled funds are. Then it adds a mechanism to be able to transfer money into the pension fund, without tax implication, to fix the problem. We want to prevent any of these situations from happening.
Then, in the case of bankruptcy, we would adopt a priority. The Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act is this document here. It's quite thick. For your benefit, I have provided a table prepared by the Library of Parliament that clearly shows the priority of where we're recommending pensions go: It's after the Canada and Quebec pension plans; all taxes that are payable; the employment insurance; suppliers' goods that were delivered shortly before the bankruptcy, and the same for agricultural products; unpaid salaries and allowances to $2,000 maximum; other salary contributions and the contribution to the pension plan; and costs incurred by a government to decontaminate land included in the bankrupt's assets. At that point, we would put in the pensions. After that would be secured claims, preferred claims and unsecured claims.
In terms of the feedback received from stakeholders, let's talk first about one of my brilliant ideas. I thought we should also add a mechanism so that if there was an insolvent pension fund, you could have third party insurance cover the insolvent portion. That might be helpful. Unfortunately, nobody liked this idea. Apparently, there's already a mechanism in place that allows people to transfer the risk to a third party, which is really the intent of that mechanism. So I would propose that we get rid of that part by striking clause 6.
Second, there was a drafting error. We tried to take out the part of the bill from Erin O'Toole that changed the type of pension. We feel that it's like a contract between the employer and the employee when they first start, and it's not right to change the deal at the end, after they have worked their whole lives. In order to get rid of proposed subsections 29(8.1) and 29(8.2), I am suggesting that we say no to clause 7.
There was another provision that had been recommended when this bill last went to INDU. There was a concern from the banking community that perhaps the mechanism would need to be changed so that the coming into force of some of the provisions, like the priority, should be delayed from the beginning. I'm suggesting a change from five years to three years. There's a proposal to perhaps add severance. I'm open to that discussion.
With that, I look forward to your questions and I look forward to your support of this bill.