Absolutely, and thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
The Canadian Chamber, as you probably know, represents businesses of every size in every region of the country. We count amongst our members several federally regulated employers in the communications, financial services, and transportation sectors.
Last fall the Canadian Chamber of Commerce released a policy paper entitled “Canada's Demographic Crunch: Can Underrepresented Workers Save Us?” In that paper we called upon the federal government to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to eliminate mandatory retirement for persons aged 65 and older. This recommendation recognizes the reality that Canada is undergoing a major demographic shift. Canada's population and its workforce are aging. Last year nearly all growth in the labour force stemmed from immigration. Some business sectors indicate they are facing shortages of the skilled people they need to remain competitive and to grow. Canada's businesses are concerned that these shortages will continue as more baby boomers reach traditional retirement age.
What must Canada do to ensure it has sufficient skilled people to replenish its workforce? While many look, quite rightly, to immigration as an answer, we need to look at the potential of our homegrown human resources as well. We need to provide more opportunities for those Canadians who are underrepresented in our workforce. These include older workers, our aboriginal peoples, and peoples with disabilities.
In light of our shrinking workforce, arbitrarily fixing a retirement age is unwise. The mandatory retirement age of 65 hearkens from another era. Things have changed. People live longer, healthier lives, and many wish and/or need to work past what has been considered the traditional retirement age. Older workers have a wealth of skills, knowledge, and experience, which are tremendous assets for a business in a country facing a labour supply crunch in their day-to-day operations and in the transferring of human capital and knowledge to younger workers.
Progress has been made to encourage older workers to stay in the labour force, and efforts must continue to remove any stigmas and institutional deterrents to the continued participation of older Canadians in the workforce. Most federally regulated employers no longer impose a mandatory retirement age, and the provinces and territories have implemented legislation to eliminate it. We urge the federal government to follow suit.
That said, just as arbitrarily setting a mandatory retirement age is outdated and economically unwise, arbitrarily allowing anyone at any age to perform any occupation is equally so. Therefore, in our recommendation to the federal government in last fall's report, we also said that employers need to have the flexibility to maintain occupational requirements based on age that exist for safety reasons. Federally regulated employers provide essential services to Canadians. Their needs and those of their employees are very different. Therefore, the laws and regulations governing the relationships need to be flexible enough to protect their respective rights and serve Canadians safely and effectively.
We recommend that Bill C-481 be amended to explicitly permit federally regulated employers to apply mandatory retirement ages in specific occupations associated with a risk to the safety of the public and/or other workers. As you have heard from other witnesses, many pension, benefit, and insurance plans are based upon the traditional retirement age of 65. We also recommend that Bill C-481 be amended to explicitly allow employers to continue to treat employees differently based on their age for pension and benefit plans. This would recognize the potential for the added cost to employers of providing these benefits to older workers and is consistent with the approach taken by the provinces and territories. Bill C-481 also needs to be amended to explicitly state that where an employee is involuntarily terminated due to safety concerns and is eligible to receive a pension, no severance is payable. The change Bill C-481 proposes making to the Canada Labour Code leaves this open to interpretation.
Employers will need time to modify their business practices to accommodate any changes resulting from the passage of Bill C-481. Therefore, should Bill C-481 become law, we propose a coming into force date of no less than two years following royal assent.
In conclusion, the federally regulated members of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce agree that the time has come to eliminate mandatory retirement. However, any legislative changes and supporting regulations must explicitly enable these employers to manage their businesses and employee relationships in a manner that ensures that they can continue to serve Canadians safely and efficiently.
Thank you.