Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to address Motion No. 197 put forward by the member for Churchill. I wish to congratulate her for bringing this forward. Clearly, her intention is to help people who are facing difficult situations and this is admirable.
By the nature of the motion, being a motion, there is not a lot of detail attached to it. We are talking about an intent when we talk about this. Many questions are raised as a result of this proposal and in order for it to work those questions must be answered.
One of the questions that I have yet to hear the mover of this motion or the previous speaker address has to do with CPP premiums themselves. For example, a logical question to ask would be whether moving WCB benefits would be counted as a salary to calculate Canada pension plan benefits? Would that mean that people would pay 4.95% of their WCB cheque into the Canada pension plan initially? That important question needs to be addressed.
The obvious follow up question would be, if not, where would the money come from? Right now, the Canada pension plan is running very close to the line. Some people argue it is actually in deficit. Where would that money come from? Where would the money come from on the employer side? Would provincial governments be expected to pay it? If people were in business and drawing a salary, then they would pay 4.95% of their salary and the employer would pay 4.95% of the salary into this plan. Those are some of the questions that need to be addressed.
What would we do about other types of benefits people receive where the same sort of arguments could be made? Canada pension plan disability is a good example. If someone is on CPP disability, that money is not counted as a salary and therefore it would lower the overall Canada pension plan that the individual might be eligible for. Do we then apply the same remedy for CPP disability as applied to WCB? The same thing would apply to private insurance because that is also not counted as a salary for the purpose of calculating Canada pension plan.
These are all important things that need to be addressed. In order for me to support this motion I would like to at least hear how these sort of things could be addressed.
Another issue that is important and one that we need to talk about to make it clear is the fact that a remedy is already in place to some degree for people whose Canada pension plan is lowered because at some point they were injured on the job and had to go on workmen's compensation. When people hit retirement they do not just have access to the Canada pension plan because there are other safety nets in place, including old age security and the guaranteed income supplement for example.
If individuals have a low income in their retirement then these safety net programs supplement that income and take into account to some degree the lower Canada pension plan they might receive as a result of being injured on the job, going on workmen's compensation, and for a period of time at least, not contributing into their Canada pension plan and building up a level of benefits. I do not think we should understate that because it is an important point to make.
If we go to all of this trouble, we may find out that people who all of a sudden enjoy better benefits from Canada pension plan may ultimately see it eroded or they may end up being no better off in the end because the benefits they would have received from old age security and/or the guaranteed income supplement may actually go down.
That is an important point to make. It requires a little bit of study in maybe a number of different scenarios to identify what would happen to these people who earn different amounts of income based on this change that is being proposed by the member for Churchill. We need those kinds of scenarios to have a good idea of whether or not in the end this would leave people materially better off, because that is obviously the goal here.
I do not think this can be overemphasized, but another problem we have and should address, which is something that would leave people better off generally, is that if people would pay lower taxes throughout the course of their lives, not only would it leave them better off in that moment, but it would allow them to save more for their retirement. It would allow them to save more in the event that they become disabled and save more to purchase their own disability insurance. I always hasten to add that aspect when we are talking about social programs to help people because often that gets discounted as a way of helping people out a lot.
It disturbs me today that in Canada people can have very low levels of income and still pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars in taxes. Perhaps we should be looking at ways to raise those basic exemptions higher so that people who are already pinching pennies to survive do not have to send the government a big chunk of the benefits that they may receive through Canada pension plan, old age security or whatever. This is something that I would like all parliamentarians to consider. There is a way to help people beyond just providing better social programs. One of those ways is to lower the level of taxes that we all pay. If we were to do that people would be better off in a number of ways.
I appreciate the intention of the motion very much. I know the member for Churchill is a big-hearted person and she wants to help. That is admirable, but if we are serious about ever having this passed, the provinces, for instance, and certainly the federal treasury would want to have some of the answers to those questions I have raised with respect to how these payments would be treated. Would the CPP premium come off these payments? Who would pay the other half of the CPP premium, would it be the provinces, et cetera? Those things must be addressed before this motion can get proper consideration.