Madam Speaker, I appreciate the thoroughness with which you have gone through the motions for us today on this section of the bill and the Group No. 2 amendments. This is an important group of amendments and I would like to take a minute to detail why they are important and to point out some of the grievous shortcomings in this section of the bill.
The amendments I put forward and ones other members have put forward, but particularly mine, are designed to return the act to where it was prior to this current piece of legislation. There is a very good reason to bring it back to where it was.
This government bill before us affects the pension plans of public service employees. Bill C-78 makes a significant change in the determination of who will be eligible for survivor benefits.
The bill changes the test. Prior to this bill the test was fairly clear. With this bill if the contributor is married and the contributor dies, the surviving spouse, a party to the marriage, is eligible for the benefits. There are a few other minor tests such as living together at the time of death and that kind of thing. Basically a person who is married to a contributor who has died is eligible for the benefits.
There is another group that is eligible. The sole test for this other group for the benefits from the contributor is cohabitation for a year and having a relationship of a conjugal nature. This terminology is new to law. We have had the phrase “having a conjugal relationship” but in this bill it is “having a relationship of a conjugal nature”. It may seem like a small point but it is not. Let me explain why.
The word conjugal usually applies to some sort of physical intimacy or sexual activity within the confines of a marriage type of relationship. Bill C-78 is basically saying that the private intimacies between two people will be the determining factor as to whether or not one is going to receive a benefit.
Think about that for a minute. The private intimacies between two people will determine whether or not they receive benefits. How will anybody know about these private intimacies? And whose business is it anyway? That is where this bill is taking us. Prior to this bill, in the legislation that is being amended, that was not a required test for the extension of benefits, nor should it be.
This bill is being proposed by a government that once had a prime minister who said the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. Now it is putting forward legislation which says that someone who has physical intimacies with a person will receive survivor benefits. It seems unworkable to me. How will anyone know? What are we going to set it up? Will we have some sort of inquisition of people's personal intimacies? That is a scary thought but it seems that is where this bill is taking us.
Beyond that, the bill does not in any way define what a relationship of a conjugal nature is. What is that doing? It is leaving it to the courts. People will be in the courts arguing whether or not they had a relationship of a conjugal nature. This is after the contributor has died. Who knows what was going on and again, what business is it of the government anyway to make that the key factor for determining benefits? It does not make sense. Where could this take us?
The bill does not say a relationship of a conjugal nature with one person. What about three people living together? Does that mean that both of those people have a relationship of a conjugal nature with the contributor? Are they both eligible? Nowhere in this legislation is it defined or addressed. It is wide open. This is a significant cause for concern. It makes the legislation unworkable.
On the other side of the coin, why is this test of a conjugal nature the key? If we want to extend benefits under Bill C-78 to people who had some sort of relationship, does that mean we are going to exclude certain people? If two people have a close relationship, share expenses, have lived together for years, are more than just average friends but they do not have any intimate physical relations, are they out or are they in? Who is going to decide that? The courts again? Certainly not this legislation because it gives absolutely no direction in that area. It is a recipe for confusion and litigation. It is very poorly drafted and very poorly thought out.
We had an opportunity in committee to ask the minister about this very issue. I thought surely the minister would have thought this out and would have an answer for me. Here is the answer I got and I am paraphrasing but it can be seen in the committee Hansard . He basically told me that the lawyers made them do it. I could not believe it.
The courts had made some decisions and I think he was referring to the Rosenberg case where the courts ruled a redefinition of the term “spouse”. The justice minister said she was going to appeal that decision and defend the current Canadian law and never did. Now the courts have redefined a section in one act in government legislation.
The President of the Treasury Board said that the courts made them do this and the lawyers told them to write it this way. Is this how the Liberal government governs? The courts made them do it. The lawyers told them to do it. What are they doing? They are setting this up for a test of physical intimacy for the determination of benefits. It just does not make sense. It is a poor approach to the serving of the people.
What kind of a bureaucracy are we going to have to establish to assess who qualifies and who does not? I hesitate to use the term as I do not want to offend anyone, but we can envision some sort of sex police or something like that who would determine the regulations on this, who is included and who is excluded.
I am attempting to point out to the House and to those who are listening today that if we are going to go down this road, surely we have to keep it independent from the government invading in the physical intimacies between two people. I concur with the statement of the Liberal prime minister of some years back. Mr. Trudeau said the government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation, yet this very piece of legislation is driving it right in there. For that reason we proposed the amendments.
I am hoping my talk today and talks I have given on this before will cause us to rethink this. I believe the hon. member from Scarborough has some points to make on this as well. I hope that we can look at these amendments to bring the act back to where it was before, where the government was not intruding in the private affairs of people. If the government wants to go down this road, rethink it and come up with something that works a lot better than this.
Of course we are told that this change is not going to impact on costs at all. It is going to be a very minor cost. How can we know that when we do not know who qualifies and who does not qualify? I do not buy the argument that this change is going to be very minor cost because we do not know who is in or out. That just does not wash.
Finally, the amendments I have proposed today were only some of the amendments that were needed. There are 249 times in the 200 pages of this bill where any mention of wife or spouse or widow or any of those kinds of terms has been replaced with one word, the word survivor. Of course, survivor is subject to the conjugality test.
We went to the legislative counsel for assistance in bringing this act back to where it was before. Because of the rush and the way the government has pushed Bill C-78 through the House without a good airing of all the issues, the government has made it impossible for the legislative counsel to make the appropriate amendments to all sections of the bill. Many sections of the bill need amending to bring it back to where it was before. I have not had an opportunity to bring them to the House because of time constraints.
Having said all that, I think I have shed some light on this. There is a very serious concern to which we all need to pay attention. I hope that when the vote comes we see some reason and accept these amendments and have another look at the bill and come forward with more appropriate legislation.