Madam Speaker, I move the following amendments to motions Nos. 5 and 6. In Motion No. 5:
That Bill C-54, in clause 23, be amended by replacing lines 25 to 39, on page 15, with the following:
"23. Subsection 37(4) of the Act is replaced".
In Motion No. 6:
That Bill C-54, in clause 23, be amended by replacing line 15, on page 16, with the following:
"the Minister shall, unless the person has-".
Madam Speaker, our purpose is not to delete this clause altogether but to amend it. The one-year period for collecting overpayments is maintained and the minister is obliged to remit the amount owing in the cases specified. Consequently, subsection 37(2) is maintained and the one-year statute of limitation continues to apply, and I quote:
(2) Where a person has received or obtained a benefit payment to which the person is not entitled, or a benefit payment in excess of the amount of that benefit payment or the excess amount, as the case may be, constitutes a debt due to Her Majesty and may be recovered in proceedings commenced
(a) at any time, where that person made a wilful misrepresentation or committed fraud for the purpose of receiving or obtaining that amount or excess amount; and
(b) in any case where paragraph (a) does not apply, at any time before the end of the fiscal year immediately following the fiscal year in which that amount or excess amount was received or obtained.
In his report, the Auditor General estimates that debts arising from pension overpayments are occurring in the range of $120 million to $220 million each year. According to the Auditor General, past efforts to prevent and detect overpayments have been minimal and largely ineffective. These figures appear in the Auditor General's report of 1993, on pages 483 and 486.
The Auditor General also indicated that "over 90 per cent of appeals relate to claims for Canada Pension Plan disability benefits. Over the past five years, the percentage of disability claims denied rose steadily and now stands at 44 per cent. Over the same period, the percentage of those denials that were appealed also increased, from 36 per cent in 1988-89 to 60 per cent in 1992-93. Prior-year statistics indicate that the majority of these appeals will be successful". These figures appear in the 1993 Auditor General's report on page 488.
Furthermore, the Auditor General estimates overpayments for disability pensions alone at $35 million. A provision that would allow the minister to suspend benefits during the appeal process, together with the increase in the number of appeals justified and filed by the department, might be seen as an underhanded way to reduce the number of overpayments.
Similarly, the decision to repeal this section and thus repeal the statute of limitation of one year on recovery of overpayments must have been dictated by the government's inability to process appeals on time.
The government appears to be incapable of doing anything other than tightening its rules and increasing the number of appeals to avoid overpayment. Seniors will therefore be the victims of the government's inability to resolve its administrative problems.
Furthermore, following the delay in issuing guaranteed income supplement cheques for seniors, which occurred near the end of April, I raised the following question in the House regarding the government's inability to manage files regarding seniors on April 27:
"Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development.
Since last Friday, Communication Québec, MP's offices and even the PMO have been flooded with calls from obviously very concerned pensioners. According to the Consumer Help Office, approximately 258,000 pensioners will see their old age pension cheques reduced by 50 per cent.
How can the minister explain that so many seniors received or will receive this year a pension cheque not including the guaranteed income supplement to which they are entitled?"
I also asked the minister a supplementary question, which was the following:
Mr. Speaker, does the minister deny that the Department of Human Resources Development's difficulty in processing requests is creating hardship this year, mostly among seniors?
The Minister of Human Resources Development's answer was alarming, and I quote:
Mr. Speaker, if in some cases there have been overpayments or problems that do not fit the regulations, of course we will be sending out these letters. But to make the kinds of exaggerated claims the hon. member has, purely to frighten and scare people, is frankly not the responsibility of a good member of Parliament.
In the May 3 issue of the Journal de Montréal , headlines such as ``Vraie course contre la montre pour le supplément de revenu''-race against time for the income supplement-clearly expose the problems facing seniors with low incomes. They are being penalized by the government's inability to fix its bureaucratic problems.
Journalist Monique Richer mentioned in her article that people who are 65 years old or older and who did not receive their guaranteed income supplement at the end of the month of April have been lining up since the beginning of the week at Guy Favreau Complex to find out what is going on.
For all these reasons, the Bloc Quebecois therefore proposes that the one-year limit on overpayments not occasioned by fraud be retained-there would be no limit in the case of fraud-so as to force the government to improve the management of the program and not unduly penalize seniors, who could have to pay back major sums a number of years after an error had been made. It would also force the minister to forgive overpayments in the following instances: when a debt cannot be recovered sufficiently quickly; when the costs of recovery are likely to be at least as high as the debt itself; when repayment would cause undue hardship for the debtor; and when the debt is the result of incorrect advice or an administrative error.
In closing, Bill C-54 provides in these instances that the minister "may" reimburse. We propose that there be no discretionary power in the above instances in order to protect the interests of seniors.
