Mr. Chair, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
I am Mark Gaillard. I am the executive officer and the national secretary, and the only full-time employee of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Veterans’ Association.
It is an honour for me to appear before you on behalf of the board of directors and the many thousands of former members and employees of the force, as well as their families, as this association has been doing since 1886. Now retired, I served for a total of 40 years as a regular member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a foreign service officer in the public service, and as a commissioned officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, regular force and reserve. I am also academically trained as a legislative drafter, having graduated with a master of laws degree in legislative drafting through a joint program of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and the Department of Justice. So, I love to talk about legislation.
The position of the RCMP Veterans’ Association is unequivocal: the complete removal of clauses 40 and 42 of Bill C-7. The purpose of Bill C-7 is to set up the legislative framework to provide for a collective bargaining regime for members of the RCMP and reservists as directed by the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. Clauses 40 and 42 of Bill C-7 have nothing to do with this purpose. Although not formally defined as such in legislation, former members of the RCMP are veterans. The service and duties performed by members of the RCMP are not like those performed by other federal public sector employees. In terms of the risk to life and to health, both physical and mental, experienced in protecting Canadians 24/7 in every province and territory and abroad, members of the RCMP are in this respect more like members of the regular force of the Canadian Armed Forces than employees of the federal government. It is for this very reason that both members of the RCMP and the regular force of the Canadian Armed Forces have been excluded from the Government Employees Compensation Act, the GECA. By amending that act, clause 40 of Bill C-7 ends that exclusion of RCMP members from GECA.
Clause 42 of Bill C-7, on the other hand, repeals a subsection of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act. The RCMP Superannuation Act was first enacted in 1959. The specific subsection Bill C-7 repeals was put in the RCMP Superannuation Act in 1998, in Bill C-12. Because we are the veterans of the RCMP who contributed to the RCMP pension plan over the course of our careers and receive retirement benefits for ourselves and survivor benefits for our spouses and dependants, it is easy to understand why we are very interested in any proposed changes to the RCMP Superannuation Act. RCMP veterans and serving members of the force who contribute to the pension plan today have not been notified, consulted, or advised about the proposed change to the RCMP Superannuation Act contained in Bill C-7. We have had no opportunity whatsoever to analyze, discuss, and provide our considered views on how this proposed change to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act will impact former and retired members of the force, the veterans, today and in the future. These changes are being made and are being rushed into law without even the pretext of consultation with stakeholders.
This, I submit, is egregious. It flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s mandate letter to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. As part of a different style of leadership, that mandate letter directed the minister to engage in constructive dialogue with stakeholders, including the not-for-profit and charitable sectors. The RCMP Veterans’ Association is a not-for-profit corporation, first registered as such in 1924.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are deeply disappointed that we must report to you that no such constructive dialogue has taken place regarding clauses 40 and 42 of Bill C-7. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Veterans’ Association hopes that this committee will see fit to remove these clauses from Bill C-7.
Thank you.