Veterans Affairs Committee on April 29th, 2022

[Jean-Guy Soulière]

We certainly don't have the data. We deal with the public service and MPs and senior government officials. There's no indication that there will be a rush to retirement.

The major hump, if you will, with retirements is when the government institutes some constraints. In 1994, for example, people were given special packages to get out of the public service, because they wanted to reduce the public service. That had an impact on pensions. We provided a lot of seminars at that time telling people, “Watch out if you retire. Here's what you should be looking for in terms of your retirement.” But a lot of people took the early packages without having a true indication of the implication to their pension.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have remaining?

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

You have 30 seconds.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I won't get a question out in that time, so I'm happy to give it to someone else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

All right. Thank you so much.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I'm happy to take it.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

You'll get a chance a bit later, Ms. Blaney.

We'll go to Mr. Sean Casey for five minutes. After that, we'll see about Ms. Blaney.

Go ahead, Mr. Casey.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start with the OSB, as it's called. I'm not exactly sure what that stands for, except I believe the first word is “optional”. If I understand the testimony to date, this OSB plan allows for a pensioner to have a deduction from his pension in order to be able to provide a portion of that pension, after his death, to his survivor. I think Mr. Imbeau spoke of this, and also the Pinsents.

If I may, Mr. Imbeau, with regard to the OSB, have I correctly characterized the way it would work, that a pensioner could take a 50% cut in his pension in order to allow for a pension of 50% of his to go to his survivor? Is that the scheme?

[Patrick Imbeau]

Yes. Essentially, it says that you choose between providing a survivor pension of 30%, 40% or 50% of your own pension. Your monthly pension is then reduced accordingly to the level of benefit that you choose. The greater the survivor pension, the greater the reduction in the pension. So yes, that's how that works.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you for that.

It strikes me that the people who need that benefit most are the ones least able to afford it. Does your organization have any statistics on what the uptake is for this program?

[Patrick Imbeau]

No. We don't have any specific statistics. This is just anecdotal, but I've been told that it's fairly low. I've been at this job for about eight years, and every time I've spoken to someone about it, I've literally never heard of somebody taking this option.

While it's good that it exists and gives a pension if there is the option, as you said, if you have a very small pension, taking a 50% cut is a substantial amount.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Yes. Absolutely.

Do you have any sense of where we might be able to look for data on uptake? I'm quite interested to know whether your anecdotal view is one that would be borne out. Where would I be able to find that out? Do you have any idea?

[Patrick Imbeau]

Part of our brief is asking to look at this kind of data and see where we could find it. I'm assuming that the pension centre would probably have an idea of how many people do the take-up, but I couldn't speak for them. You'd have to ask them.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you.

In the opening remarks from your organization, I think it was Mr. Pizzino who talked about the complexity of this issue and the importance of “clear and accurate data”. Now, it's my understanding that after the veterans survivors fund was put in the 2019 budget, there was then an effort to pull together the data from CIMVHR in order to identify the size and characteristics of the survivor population.

Given his comment with respect to the importance of data, and given that at least a couple of years have passed, could we have your comments on whether or not a couple of years is reasonable to gather the information that is necessary to assess what should be done with respect to this veterans survivors fund and how it should be structured?

[Patrick Imbeau]

I believe it would have been possible. I spoke to Eric Li. His research has been done. It's just never been published. Being able to pull up those numbers, I mean, it shouldn't be too.... We're not asking for these gigantic studies about how many people are affected, or for a quantitative study and surveys and whatever else. We're just basically looking at data that should already exist within the pension centre of how many people are affected. You could then ask someone like the PBO or an actuary to look at how much it would impact the pension plan. Again, that itself shouldn't be a two-year process.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

What advice would you have for the government, without yet having that data, with respect to the structure of the veterans survivors fund, given that it appears clearly to still be a work-in-progress?

[Patrick Imbeau]

I don't understand why the funds have not been doled out. I guess maybe there's some issue with identifying exactly who these people are. Again, I'm taking guesses, because, as Anthony spoke about, we need transparency here. We don't know what's going on. We don't know why they haven't been able to identify these people. We don't know why they haven't been given the funds. We know that there was research done from CIMVHR and it wasn't published, so what's going on?

I understand that there are possibly issues with COVID, and that's why, for example, Eric Li's research was affected, but that shouldn't affect the numbers of take-up. The pension centre should have this information.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Imbeau and Mr. Casey.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I expect that Mr. Glenn's advice would be to include the RCMP vets.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Casey.

The next two questioners will have two and a half minutes each. I don't think we'll have enough time to get to Mrs. Wagantall or Mr. Samson, unless they have just a quick question.

Right now I'd like to invite Mr. Luc Desilets to—

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

They won't have any questions. You'll see.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Go ahead, Mr. Desilets.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I'm joking.

My question is for Mr. Soulière.

We hear and understand that people say it would cost too much, and so on.

I have a first question and I would ask you to answer it quickly, because I have three to ask. Can we use the cash surplus to fund this program?

[Jean-Guy Soulière]

First of all, we need to know if there is a surplus. Investments are made for pension plans, and there is a surplus. However, the difficulty is that there are indeed two pension plans: the one that applies to those who drew their pension before the year 2000 and the one that applies to those who will do so after the year 2000. This further complicates matters.