Government Operations Committee on Feb. 15th, 2018

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I couldn't.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We invited you in a motion, and, if you recall, your side voted down your return to discuss that.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

No, at some point I can come back and discuss those.

Again, we have had at Treasury Board a very active agenda—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. McCauley, your time is up.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm out of time.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

But as I've said to you—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

In a letter to the committee, I commended the committee for its work and expressed my interest in following up with both the direction and the specifics.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Public Works commended us on our report on Canada Post as well, and that went nowhere, so....

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. McCauley, your time is up.

Mr. Blaikie, you have seven minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Welcome, Minister Brison. It's always great to have an opportunity to delve a little more deeply into particular issues with you here at committee.

Supplementary estimates (C) is one of likely two last chances for the government to include whatever appropriations might be required to keep the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories employees in the public service pension plan. I notice there does not seem to be anything in supplementary estimates (C) about that.

I know you're familiar with the issue because you and Minister Jim Carr have been meeting with the unions involved with the workers who are essentially being shut out of their pension plan. The deadline for that is this September, which is why there are so few opportunities for government to appropriate whatever funds might be necessary. When you were last here in November I asked for the costing for that. A decision is going to get made one way or another before September. Either a decision will be made to allow them back into that pension plan or by default they'll be pushed out if the government does nothing.

Do you have the costing of the financial impact for government to keep those employees in the plan?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you very much, Daniel.

I'd like to start, and then I'll call on Yaprak as well on this issue.

The Harper government's decision to sell AECL has had a very significant impact on CNL employees. We understand that. We're doing everything we can to offer pension protection for employees affected by that sell-off. It is not possible for CNL employees to remain in the public service pension plan as they are no longer public servants, but we are currently working to bring in regulations that will protect the employees' pension eligibility, with the goal that those new regulations would be in place prior to September. You cited September as being an important date in the transfer. The regulations would ensure that—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Would they allow them to stay in the plan or not?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

It would ensure the duration of their current and future employment with CNL and their age of retirement will be used to determine their eligibility for an unreduced pension under the public service pension plan for their service to the date of the transfer. The regulations will help mitigate adverse effects on pension benefits by also allowing survivor benefits and in situations where these employees marry or enter into common-law relationships or have a child while employed by CNL.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Is it the position of the government that nothing will be done to allow those employees to stay in the plan past September? You're talking about trying to facilitate the existing benefits for up to the cut-off date, but not to continue to support their pension plan.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The issue we have, Daniel, is that if somebody is no longer a public servant, it is not possible for them to continue to participate in it.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

It's an awkward employment situation, isn't it, though, because CNL is not.... The employer is a company...if they are the employer, because the employees stay with CNL regardless of who gets the management contract, and I think that's a five-year management contract. If a private contractor comes in to manage the assets of CNL, including the employees, they're not technically the employer because if the management contract changes those same employees will stay with CNL. They'll be managed by the new contractor. Are the employees CNL employees, and where does CNL fit if CNL is not the employer? Or are they the employer, and then there's a management contractor?

It seems to me to be a deliberately vague employment scenario, the consequence of which is that while these employees won't be the employees of whoever's hired to manage the assets of CNL, they remain with CNL as if they continued to work for the government, just as the assets nominally remain government assets, but the effect is that they're shut out of some of the benefits of working for the government. That seems to me to be a strange way to structure the management of those assets. The only really obvious substantive outcome is that those employees are shut out of the pension plan.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

These are good points that can help inform regulations, and Yaprak, Renée, and other public servants are engaged in that. You may want to add something further.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

One of the concerns going forward is that if the government doesn't intervene to change the model... and one way to do that would be to try to come to an arrangement under which these persons who are effectively civil servants, though not in name, could continue to remain in the plan through an arm's-length company that technically owns the government assets, even though it contracts out the management of those assets.

This seems to me to be a bad precedent for government workers, where government can set up a shell company, transfer its assets, and its employees in some strangely defined way, and tell them they're going to continue to maintain and work with these assets, that they're going to have a different manager from time to time, but they won't have a pension anymore. That seems to me to be a bad model if you're looking at it from the point of view of the people who have maintained these assets for decades.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The genesis of this was, of course, the decision of the previous government to sell the asset. What we have is people who were public servants and as such participated in the public service pension plan, but who are not going to be public servants in the future. I think that's the nub of it.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I think that's something the government should make right by keeping them public servants.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

We're seeking ways through the regulations to ameliorate some of those issues.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Mr. Drouin.