Mr. Speaker, I find it rather strange that the President of the Treasury Board would stand and tell us how virtually all the civil servants are behind Bill C-78 and that it is going to be a wonderful thing for the civil servants, the employees of the government, to find out that their employer is going to take $30 billion out of their pension plan. He says they feel good about it. I wonder who he has been talking to. I do not think that very many civil servants are enthused about the idea of the government raiding the pension plan to the tune of $30 billion.
The minister talked about the fair and equitable contents of this bill. I draw the attention of members to an article which appeared in the Globe and Mail today on page 2. The headline reads “Old RCMP pension plan leaves widows stranded”. It states:
Twenty-nine days after Eva Fisk's husband died in 1991, she received a letter from the RCMP. The letter said her husband Albert, a Mountie for 22 years, had not left her a pension. The letter also said she was no longer covered under the federal health-care plan.
“It was horrible, so I threw it out”, said Ms. Fisk, now in her late 70s and living in Victoria. “I was cut off”.
If the minister is so concerned about fairness and equity, I would have thought that he would have provided some redress for this particular situation where widows of RCMP officers are left high and dry with absolutely nothing. Based on the rules of the pension plan in the past they are left with nothing.
The article continues:
The RCMP pension plan was amended in 1949 to improve survivor benefits, but participation came with a price for non-commissioned officers and constables.
Lower-ranking Mounties were required to cash out their principal payments and give up the accrued interest they earned in order to join the new plan. Mounties promoted to commissioned-officer ranks were entitled to keep their benefits under the old plan without cashing out their principal payments.
We have very clear discrimination between commissioned officers in the RCMP and non-commissioned officers and constables who were left high and dry and who were forced to cash out their pension plans, give up all the interest they had earned, while the commissioned officers were able to keep all their money plus the government interest and roll it into the new plan. Has Bill C-78 provided redress for this issue? Absolutely not.
It is unfortunate that the minister would use such words as fair and equitable when talking about this legislation. When their husbands die, widows of members of the most respected police force in the world, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, are left high and dry with nothing.
I talked with the department involved and it said they opted out of the pension plan. They did not want to provide for their widows and orphans. They made that election. If they were single and subsequently got married, they were again given the offer. It is rather strange that we would have the situation where people could leave their family members high and dry and the government would agree to it. It cannot be fair.
I asked the department to assure me that members were given the option to opt in to the widows and orphans section of the pension plan when they married. It said absolutely. Back in those days a person had to ask his employer, the RCMP, for permission to get married. He could not go to the local church and get married without getting permission from his employer.
We have come a long way. People no longer ask for their employer's permission to get married. Common law situations are recognized. Bill C-78 now extends that to same sex relationships. It goes beyond that to basically any relationship of any kind is going to qualify.
I was speaking to a person this morning who asked about the situation of two people sharing an apartment, that one could claim to be the survivor of the other. I said yes but the person could dispute that. We are talking here about survivor benefits. When a civil servant dies and is in the graveyard, his companion or roommate, even though there was no conjugal relationship, could claim survivor benefits and nobody could dispute it. As I have said before, the lawyer before the committee indicated they were going to take the person's word for it. Therefore, even if there was no conjugal relationship, we are going to have to pay benefits in that situation.
It seems that the government wants to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to same sex benefits. It wants to have any relationship whatsoever qualify for survivor benefits, but at the same time it has narrowed it down by defining it as conjugal and cohabitation. How it intends to police that, it really has no idea. It intends to leave it up to the courts.
I think of the M. v H. decision that came down last week. It concerned the Family Law Act of Ontario and dealt with the definition of spouse. The definition as far as I understand it in section 29 of the Family Law Act is either people who are married or a man and a woman living in a conjugal relationship for three years.
Bill C-78 deals with pension plans and defines a relationship as conjugal and cohabitation for one year. I understand there are some circumstances where cohabitation for six months qualifies as a common law relationship. I am wondering how soon it will be that after a one night fling one's pension will be at risk. I am sure that would take some of the enthusiasm out of one night stands. The point is we have to look to where we are going as far as these issues are concerned.
In 1949 if a person wanted to get married he had to ask his employer for permission. That went by the wayside. Then people did not bother to get married. Then it did not matter that it was the opposite sex. Then it did not matter how long the relationship lasted and now it is down perhaps to as low as six months. Goodness knows where it is going to end up.
That is the issue we see on the slippery slope where Bill C-78 is not fair and equitable. It wants to hand out money anywhere and everywhere on relationships that cannot be defined, that cannot be policed, if I may use that terminology.
I am at a loss. It is very disappointing. We as parliamentarians are in the House debating a new law of the land. I expect it will become the law of the land because the government is going to ram this bill through later today. Regardless of what we say in the House and regardless of the fact that about eight members on the government side voted against this bill, it is going to get rammed through.
The other day I was reading the M. v H. decision the supreme court brought down last Thursday. It referred on several occasions to parliament's wishes and that parliament knew what it was doing when it passed the legislation.
Here parliament is expressing its serious opposition to this bill that was drafted by the bureaucrats, 200 pages of technical, detailed, complex legislation. The bill would have been passed through committee in 15 minutes had there been the chance but I was able to slow it down to four hours. This is not parliament expressing its will. This is parliament being railroaded into rubber stamping what the government wants.
I would hope that is on the record because if, as and when this is ever challenged in court, I would never want the courts to say that parliament freely expressed its wishes and opinion on this particular issue, because its opinion is irrelevant. It is being railroaded into approving something that has not been analysed, debated or thought through. We have not examined the ramifications of where it is leading us.
We are going to find Bill C-78 finished and voted on in the House of Commons tonight. The government has organized it by cracking the whip and saying “You will be here to vote for the bill”. For those who would like to do otherwise, I understand there are all kinds of incentives to be in other places. We will find out whether they have accepted these invitations later on this evening. What can I say, Mr. Speaker? It is a travesty that the House which should approve the legislation is being forced to endorse the government's legislation.
The $30 billion is another issue which I find rather contemptuous. There is a $30 billion actuarial surplus in the plan today because of a fortunate coincidence that has brought several factors together.
Inflation has come down quite dramatically yet because the money is invested in 20 year bonds the return on the plan is still very high. Because there was a six year wage freeze the cost of pensions has been reduced. Salaries were not so much reduced, but their growth was less than anticipated through the wage freeze. Therefore, pensions are less than anticipated, hence the cost of pension payouts are less than anticipated. Because inflation is down, the cost of pension payments in future years will be reduced. This is the largest fully indexed pension plan existing in the country today. If inflation is down, the cost of these pension payments over the next number of years is going to be reduced.
It is not because of overcontribution by the government. It is not because of overcontribution by the employees either. It is just that these fortunate circumstances have come together to create an actuarial assessment which leaves more money in the plan than otherwise required.
The government wants to take that money. It wants to take the money that was contributed by itself and the employees. It is very distasteful that it would help itself to money put into the plan by its very own employees. In the private sector it is totally illegal. It would not be allowed under any circumstances.
Bill S-3 that was passed by the House a year or two ago laid out specific rules for taking out a surplus from a plan if there was such a surplus. There had to be a vote by the membership. A 50% vote by members was required to remove the money under certain circumstances. In other circumstances it required a two-thirds majority of the members before the employer was allowed to take the money out.
The President of the Treasury Board has told us that many of the members support this. Why did he not put this to a vote? The government imposed that restriction on employers and refuses to apply it to itself.
I again register my opposition to the government's taking $30 billion out of the plan.
There are two other major fundamental issues in the bill. One is to split the payment of CPP and pension contributions into two payments rather than one. Until now civil servants have contributed 7.5% of their salaries as a combined payment to CPP and the pension plan. The government has introduced very dramatic increases in the CPP contributions over the next number of years, increases as large as 73%. If the CPP contributions were to go up, by obvious correlation the contributions to the pension plan would go down. The government says it cannot have that. It wants to put them on the same footing as all other Canadians where they have to pay the CPP contributions and the pension plan as two separate payments.
We do not have any problem with that, but we do have a problem with the fact that it will now increase the civil service employees' contributions to the pension plan from about 30% to 40%. The minister tells us the employees are not accepting any of the risk of the plan yet they will pay a whole bunch more into the plan. The government by definition will pay a whole bunch less into the plan. And the government says it is carrying the risk. It cannot be.
The other one is the privatization of the plan. The money will be invested in the private capital market rather than in government bonds. Perhaps that is not a bad situation. We do not dispute that there is an opportunity to make more in the private sector but we do know that sometimes less can be made in the private sector.
If the plan makes less and the employees are contributing to the plan, they are sharing in the risk. They share in the risk if the return is lower. The value of the plan may not be as high as it should be or could be. Therefore they have to cover their 60:40 split of contributions to the plan to ensure it is a viable plan.
Lots of arguments can be made for the employees sharing in the risk in the plan yet the government would say there is none.
I do not think the government is being honest and forthright. It is certainly not allowing enough debate on this bill. It is 200 pages of complex legislation. It went through committee in less than four hours. Closure has been introduced twice on this bill. What can I say? I call it the great run at the brick wall where the government feels that because it wants to do something the House has to endorse its position.
I find that rather odious. I object to it. I would certainly hope that the bill would be defeated this evening, although I doubt it will because we know that when the government wants something it gets its members to fall in line, much to my disgust.