Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-208, an act to amend the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act.
While I commend the member for Saint John for putting the private member's bill forward, in my estimation it does not go far enough. My colleague dealt with the first part of it and I will deal with the second part.
It purports to deal with two aspects of the pension plan provided for former members of the House and former senators. It proposes amendments to the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act in an effort to provide a quick fix regarding two features of our pension plan which have attracted a good deal of criticism in the country. I am referring to the fact that the act places no restrictions on double dipping and permits a former member to begin drawing a pension immediately upon retirement regardless of his or her age.
At this point I should state clearly that the government is very much aware of the widespread concern of Canadians about the pension plan for members of Parliament. The government is committed to change but wishes to do so in a rational and comprehensive fashion, not piecemeal, which unfortunately is the approach adopted in the private member's bill.
It would be prudent to await the proposals of the Lapointe commission and modify the pension plan for members of Parliament in accordance with a more integrated and cohesive approach to the overall compensation package appropriate for parliamentarians.
My hon. colleague from Essex-Windsor has dealt ably with the issue of double dipping in the context of the amendments proposed in the bill. Therefore I shall direct my remarks to other deficiencies in these proposals, deficiencies which are serious enough that the intent of the bill could not be realized if it were to become law.
The major problem with the bill as it stands today is that it deals only with some of the benefits to which a former member is entitled. As hon. members may know, the amendments made to the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act in 1992 brought the pension plan into compliance with the Income Tax Act registration rules and essentially divided the pension plan into two parts: part I, the registered plan and part II, a retirement compensation arrangement.
The proposed amendments in the bill only deal with part I of the act, the registered plan, and purport to delay commencement of pension benefits under the registered plan until age 60. As an aside, these amendments do not even deal with all benefits to which a former member might be entitled under part I, since they do not address the special joint and survivor benefit which a former member may elect to receive under section 23 of the act in cases where a former member wishes to provide survivor benefit protection to a spouse he or she married after ceasing to be a member.
Not only is the proposed subsection 13.1(2) quite redundant, it fails to achieve its objective of delaying receipt of benefits until age 60. I would assume that is what the hon. member would like it to do since it does not amend part II of the act, the portion of the act which contains the provisions that allow for benefits to be paid prior to age 60.
Further, the proposed amendment seeks to delay commencement until age 60 but does not make any exception to that rule in the case where a former member became disabled after retirement but before he or she reached age 60. Surely it could not have been intended that in no circumstance would a benefit be payable to a former member who was unfortunate enough to become disabled prior to age 60.
Turning to the matter of the proposed companion changes to survivor benefits, hon. members should be aware that delaying receipt of survivor benefits until a deceased member or former member would have been 60 years of age is quite inconsistent with any other federal pension legislation and contrary to the standards set out in any pension benefits standards legislation in the country.
Such a measure could be characterized as regressive at best, not to mention slightly absurd in the case of children's benefits, since few such recipients would still qualify for benefits if they had to wait until their parents reached 60 years old. No provision is made for an intervening disability in these instances either.
There are two further aspects of the survivor benefit proposed in the bill that are problematic. The first of these is that again the bill does not address the survivor benefits paid under part II of the act and does not therefore impose the delay until age 60 for these benefits.
Second, the provision that purports to delay payment until age 60 does not have any transitional arrangements and could have the effect of cutting off the benefits of those persons presently in receipt of survivor benefits who became entitled to them under the law as it now stands. It is far from clear that the proposed section 13.3 would prevent this from happening, given the wording of the proposed new section 24 of the act.
In conclusion the bill may be well intentioned but falls far short of achieving its objectives. Given its structural defects as drafted it could be said to raise questions of equity. As I mentioned earlier the government will be coming out with a report in July of this year.
I would like to quote from Hansard of March 5, 1991. I am on record as speaking in favour of amending the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act.
I find it hypocritical that someone in the private sector who might get laid off from their job, or might be transferred to another company within the private sector in another area of Canada, does not have the same privileges as we do as members of Parliament under the present legislation.
We have widows and widowers who are living on limited income. We have a country whose economy is very tight today. We have people who are unemployed and I think that we as members of Parliament must show some compassion and some consideration.
I am in support of amending the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act. Parts I and II must both be amended. We cannot look at one in isolation of the other. I am pleased to speak to the bill. Again I commend the member for Saint John for taking this initiative and looking at it, but we need to go one step further to cover all aspects of the bill.