Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House a second time to speak to Bill C-2 concerning reform of the Canada pension plan.
When I spoke the first time, I mentioned that this reform of Canadian pensions was of special concern to me, because I am the Bloc Quebecois critic on policies affecting the elderly. Furthermore, I have risen many times in this House to defend the rights of the elderly, one of the most vulnerable groups in society.
The Bloc Quebecois agrees with the general objective of the reform, which is to preserve the viability of a public pension system. However, this reform concerns Canadians more than Quebeckers, since less than 0.5% of the people living in Quebec receive Canada pension plan benefits.
I would like to reiterate what my colleague for Mercier said: the Government of Canada or the governments of the other provinces should have done the same thing as Quebec in 1964-1965 when it created its Caisse de dépôt et placement.
According to forecasts, retirement benefits from the Régie des rentes du Québec, and also the benefits from federal income security programs, will reach $49 billion in 2001, and as much as $170 billion in current dollars in 2030.
Since the birth rate has gone down considerably over the past several years, we have to ask ourselves: What will be the consequences of the greater than expected rise in the contribution rate that will result from the increase in capitalization?
Whereas there were 7 people of working age for every pensioner in 1951, the ratio dropped to 5.3:1 in 1991, and by 2031 will be 2.4:1. Unlike the Quebec pension plan, then, the federal programs have no reserve they can capitalize on.
We therefore believe that this will have the effect of reducing the intergenerational inequality by making the baby-boomer generation pay, and most of these have about twenty years left to work. Needless to say, the Bloc Quebecois has never called for the end of the Canada pension plan and I would refer you to the speeches of myself and my colleagues in this connection, all of which focussed on the same thing: leaving seniors' rights untouched. The younger generations must also be able to benefit from a public pension plan.
In Machiavelli's Prince , he says “The people could bear any burden, provided it was imposed gradually”.
I would like to focus once again on the changes proposed for federal disability benefits. The federal government is experiencing great difficulty in implementing the disability benefit. Last year, the auditor blamed the federal government for the unjustified escalating costs of disability benefits, for the most part the result of its rules being too lax.
At the present time the federal benefit is more generous that the Quebec pension plan's disability benefits, mainly because federal administrative policy allows more people to be eligible. A departmental directive allows a person to be declared disabled after the age of 55 if unable to perform his or her own job. The federal government intends to abolish this directive, thus tightening up administration of the plan.
Quebec has never had a directive of this type. In fact, a person is eligible for disability benefits if he or she has contributed for two of the past three years, five of the last ten, or half of the same contributory period.
The federal government wants to limit eligibility to those who have contributed for four of the last six years, which ought to cut back considerably on eligibility to the plan. Today, at the report stage, we need to look at a number of amendments moved by several of the parties.
I will deal particularly with Motion No. 9, moved by the New Democratic Party, which provides that a provincial government should be entitled to borrow funds at the lowest rate of interest available to the federal government. Unfortunately, the Bloc Quebecois cannot support this amendment, because it goes against the primary responsibility of the investment board, which is to achieve a maximum rate of return to ensure the plan's viability. A wide consultation process will take place, possibly in early 1998.