Madam Speaker, Bill C-78, what an incredible piece of legislation brought forward by the Liberal government. I could not believe it when I first saw it. It seemed more like a page out of MAD magazine rather than serious legislation.
This bill will allow the tax and spend Liberal government to seize the money for more government spending which is currently held by public sector pension plans both now and in the future. A new government appointed—not necessarily qualified, just appointed—pension board with no employee representation will get to manage the funds. The board will operate without the scrutiny of the auditor general or parliament and will be exempt from access to information laws.
In addition to seizing the surpluses in the employee pension plans, this bill will also see the government increasing the employee contributions. If these pension plans have a shortfall in the future when the surplus has been spent or when the funds have been mismanaged, the good old Canadian taxpayer gets to make up the shortfall.
All this is crazy enough, but there is more. In order to appease the justifiably upset pension plan members, the government's bill states that “survivor benefits are extended to an expanded class of beneficiaries”. It looks good from a distance, Madam Speaker, but before you trade in your old reliable car on the new improved model, take a closer look. Look past the flashy paint job and you will find that on the new model the tires are flat, the engine will not even idle and it is full of electrical shorts. The new improved model does not even run.
Bill C-78 proposes to extend pension survivor benefits not only to married couples but also to include couples who cohabit in a relationship of a conjugal nature. The words survivor or survivors replace all 249 references to spouse, wives, widow in the current legislation.
In Bill C-78, pension benefits of the contributor will be paid to the survivor. The definition of a survivor depends on the term “a relationship of a conjugal nature”, that is, the survivor must be in a relationship of a conjugal nature with the contributor to qualify as a survivor. This is where it starts to get strange. Nowhere is this critical term “a relationship of a conjugal nature” defined in the bill. Yet other than married, survivor eligibility depends on it.
Without defining this term, Bill C-78 survivor benefit provisions will be subject to claims from individuals in all manner of relationships which they deem to be of a conjugal nature. If any two roommates regardless of gender who have lived together for at least a year qualify for survivor benefits, the cost of the plan could greatly increase and the good old Canadian taxpayer will be picking up the tab.
What does conjugal mean? I looked it up. The Canadian Law Dictionary , third edition states that conjugal rights are “the rights of married persons, which include the intimacies of domestic relations”. The Concise Oxford Dictionary , ninth edition, states that conjugate means to unite sexually. To the extent that conjugal means having sexual relations, one wonders how the government intends to verify that the relationship is indeed conjugal in nature.
The profound irony here is that the party of Pierre Trudeau who was famous for stating that the government had no business in the bedrooms of the nation would now put forward a bill that seems to call for the establishment of some sort of government conjugality or sexual activity test or inspectors.
Perhaps it is proposing that some report be filed or a sign-off by both people. Maybe it could just be added to the Statistics Canada questions. Lord knows, they ask for every other kind of personal information. No doubt, someone would get the bright idea not only to report frequency but maybe quality. We could compare ourselves with the Swedes. We could boost Viagra sales. The mind boggles at the possibilities.
Interestingly, we do not have this problem with married couples, because there is a legal recognition of their life commitment. No conjugality assessment is required. This is probably a good thing, particularly for MPs with the hours we keep and the time away from home. I do not know about all of the other members, but I am sure this lifestyle does not necessarily have a positive effect on the conjugality component of our marriages.
How do these other relationships gain recognition as conjugal? Is it just because they say so? How many roommates will claim conjugality in order to get survivor benefits? What will the cost be? If taxpayers are backstopping the entire plan, should they not be informed?
There appears to be nothing stopping one from being in a conjugal relationship with more than one person. If a person cohabits with more than one person and they are “conjugal” with them all, it appears they would qualify for survivor benefits under Bill C-78. They all would. Conversely two roommates, the same sex or otherwise, who are close and maybe share expenses, but do not have intimate physical relations, do they qualify for survivor benefits? If not, why not?
Are people included or excluded based on private physical intimacy? Is this the new policy of the party that said the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation? The more one thinks about it, the goofier it gets to tie survivor pension eligibility for relationships outside of marriage on the conjugality of the relationship.