Human Resources Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Okay. I just wanted to know that.

You talk about the issue of unintended consequences here. Although concerned, I'm not so much concerned about those who are protected with good collective agreements and have pensions that they can look forward to and can retire at a decent age and live in some dignity. What concerns me are the hundreds of thousands of people out there who have no pension at all. What seems to be happening within our labour force now, and in society, is rather than working at trying to make sure everybody has a decent pension, the default position is “Just let them work a little longer”. So you don't retire at 60 or 65. We see them. We see people in the stores, working in retail, in restaurants, and in different places, and more and more it's students and it's the retired, or the retired who have no pensions, who are doing this kind of work.

It seems an interesting labour market strategy, frankly. In terms of unintended consequences, if we get to a place where we decide even to move the age of qualifying for the Canada Pension Plan, for example, from 65 to 67, that affects a whole lot of people and of course takes a bit of pressure off the Canada Pension Plan itself and the Canadian government.

Do any of you want to respond to that? Have you thought about that at all, in the context of Bill C-481?

[Capt Paul Strachan]

I would say that you know that not everybody does have a robust pension plan such as ours. That's certainly not within my purview, but I certainly agree that it is within the purview of this committee and Parliament to address. It's sort of beyond my pay grade, I guess. But you are correct, and you note that many don't. This bill, amended as we've suggested, would provide that protection, except in those circumstances where there is a pension plan. So you're protecting the pension plan. You're protecting the collective interests of the groups who have negotiated it, but you're also defending the individual rights in cases where they need defending.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Three minutes.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

That's all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Mr. MacGregor, did you want to respond to that? I don't know if you had the opportunity.

[Prof. David MacGregor]

It's interesting to hear the same arguments across the table that were confronted in Ontario when they were making their changes. Ontario decided not to exclude pension plans from the legislation, and as far as I know, there's no harm caused by the elimination of mandatory retirement to any of these pension plans. I'd be hard pressed to see any example of that happening across Canada where mandatory retirement has been removed.

Similarly, I was happy to hear the person representing the armed forces mention BFORs, which is bona fide occupational requirements. That's certainly a better alternative than simply dismissing people because they've reached a certain age.

That's all I would like to say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

All right. Thank you very much.

Mr. Martin, you actually have two minutes left.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Actually, that stimulates some thought.

Given the number of people who are working beyond 60 and 65 out there in the workplace, mandatory retirement doesn't seem to be having much of an effect.

Is this an issue more for those who have good positions who want to continue working, making the good wages that come with that, even though they may also have good pension plans? And is it not so much a concern—which is mine—for those who actually would like to retire at an early age so they can get away from some of the difficult work that they often have to do? You know the wear and tear on the body that comes, for example, from working in a steel plant or a paper mill. They'd like to retire at 60 or 65, while they still have a little bit of health left and a little time in front of them where they can enjoy their families and some recreation.

I wouldn't like to see us doing something here in haste that would somehow have an unintentional consequence that would affect people who really want us to focus on getting them a decent pension scheme that they could plug into so that they could in fact retire with some dignity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Mr. Casson for seven minutes, please.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Being a million-miler with Air Canada, I should focus on the pilots, I guess, and make sure they're doing their job properly, but I'm going to focus on our folks here from the military.

General, you did lead into a bit about what it would take for the military to change the present situation in order to test everybody for each job they have and make sure they are capable. The fact that your mandate is dictated to the military from the government and the tasks that we ask you to perform can change very rapidly, whether they involve getting ready to go to Haiti tomorrow or getting ready to go to Afghanistan for 10 years, or doing the job we ask you to do...you have to be ready to do that and the training that goes into that.

I know from experience, from going to where our troops are deployed, that whatever job they are doing, whether they are a mechanic, a clerk, or whatever, or whether they're in a combat unit, they all carry a weapon. They all have to use it, and they all better be ready to use it and be capable of doing so. That aspect of what you indicated is important.

I just want to zero in on the safety concerns there would be for the armed forces if this bill were implemented, and also on your ability to recruit and retain at a level to replace.... I don't know if there's a bubble in the military the way there is in the rest of the working world, such that in the next number of years there's going to be a large number of people leaving and you'll have to be ready to fill those vacancies or be able to still carry on the mandate, whether or not you fill the individual job or whatever.

Maybe you could just talk a bit about that and the safety concerns it would create for our men and women in uniform, and also the ability to replenish and recruit.

[BGen John Madower]

Sir, thanks very much for the question.

Although I indicated what it would take, I would also like to take a different approach should the mandatory retirement age be eliminated. What I would like to stress is that we also assess that as being problematic from a management perspective, and hence the position we've taken is that for the Canadian Armed Forces the mandatory retirement age should not be eliminated.

With respect to your observation about everybody needing to be a soldier, sailor, or airman first and then a particular occupation second, I just had the pleasure of returning on Sunday at 6 o'clock from Afghanistan, having flown out to one of the forward bases we had there. You had infantry soldier, infantry soldier, infantry soldier, and another person who looked exactly like an infantry soldier. She carried a weapon. She was just as capable as the infantry soldier, but in addition, she carried a camera, because she was part of the combat camera team. So the particular occupations we ask our men and women to do are exceptionally demanding, hence the position we have taken here.

For us, it's predominantly a question of force renewal and ensuring a vibrant, capable force that is capable of defending the men and women of Canada and our interests. My assessment would be that a removal of mandatory retirement age would be problematic with regard to force renewal. We would also likely see stagnation, as there would be a reduction in the recruiting we would need to see to ensure that constant flow-through to revitalize and rejuvenate ourselves.

Karol, would you care to add anything?

[Karol Wenek, Director General, Military Personnel, Department of National Defence]

Yes, I'd be happy to.

Just to elaborate a bit on the issue of safety, I think our primary concern is the increased risk of individual performance failure as people's physical and psychological fitness naturally deteriorate over time. We have a little bit of internal evidence that supports this view.

Several years ago, we had what I would call a bit of a spike in the number of medical releases we were seeing in the regular component. I commissioned a study to look at what the correlates were of that spike, what the causal factors were, or some of the antecedents. The primary factor that predicted that spike in medical releases was length of service, particularly past 12 and 15 years of service, and particularly in the harder combat trades, as we term them. There was that increased incidence. Most of the issues were musculoskeletal injuries. In other words, this is all attributable to wear and tear on the body from jumping out of aircraft and riding around in hard vehicles, those kinds of things.

So that was a supporting piece of evidence for that deterioration. We know also that with age, your physical abilities deteriorate somewhat. It's not rapid, it's not the same across people, but there is that kind of deterioration.

In a small fighting force like ours--it is relatively small by world standards--it's important that everybody be capable of carrying the load. That's what the universality of service principle refers to, really. It gives us the capability to rotate individuals and units through operational settings. We can't just send people over there for an indefinite period of time. It would essentially result in fighting those units down. So they have to be rotated, and that means the bench strength has to be there to allow for that rotation.

The risk here is that if you have people who are going to those settings, while they may be prepared to accept the risk to themselves personally, we can't accept the risk that they would pose to others. Unit effectiveness is a function of the collective performance of all of the people on the team. If one individual fails, the team may fail, and that may mean lack of success of the mission or injuries to others.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

I guess we're out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Yes, we are out of time. Thank you very much.

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here. We apologize that we had to hurry through, but I think we were able to get some very important information. Thank you for being here.

I'm going to suspend for one minute. Then we'll go into clause-by-clause consideration of this bill.

I want to let the committee members know that I have a very brief amount of business pertaining to next week's meeting. I'm going to discuss it during the last two minutes of our meeting today, just so you know.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

We are ready to resume clause-by-clause.

Are we ready to begin, Madam Folco?

Yes, Mr. Komarnicki.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I have a point of procedure or order, I'm not sure which. I'd like to raise a matter and then discuss it before we get into clause-by-clause.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

All right. I think there's time to do that.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I haven't spoken a lot to Madam Folco about this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Yes.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Komarnicki.

Are we not in camera?

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Normally clause-by-clause is public. So we are public.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Sorry, Mr. Komarnicki.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I want to raise a point on this. It's a matter, perhaps, of due diligence and ensuring that we get this right. What I'm going to propose is that we table the clause-by-clause for a future time, until we can have the legal experts look at some of the proposals people have had for amendments.

I know there's been some agreement on what the amendments might look like. But Mr. Strachan indicated that the way the legislation is now enforced is too broad and needs to be restricted. Mr. Martin, in his questioning, said we shouldn't be proceeding with haste and having it result in unintended consequences. I think there's general agreement that mandatory retirement, as we now know it, needs to go, subject to some exceptions. I know that FETCO, for instance, had suggested four or five potential amendments. I'm not so sure that I would agree with all that they proposed. But two, for sure, have been raised by witnesses from the Human Rights Commission and other organizations. One had to do with benefit plans. We actually haven't heard from any expert witness who would tell us what kind of impact this legislation would have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Mr. Komarnicki, I'm sorry. You began by saying you wanted to propose a motion. If you have a motion, please put it on the table. Then we can discuss it.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I was working my way up to the motion.