Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to rise in the House today to participate in this extremely important and timely topic. It is timely because we are in process of starting Veterans Week next week and it ends on Remembrance Day, November 11. Every member of Parliament participates fully in the thousands and thousands of Remembrance Day ceremonies that take place across our great country.
In my riding of Charlottetown we have the main ceremony at the Cenotaph on Grafton Street. It is followed by a reception at the Daniel J. MacDonald Building, which is the headquarters of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Then there are other ceremonies at the legion and other places, for a full day and a good day.
There is one very unfortunate trend I have noticed in my last six years as the member of Parliament. The fortunate trend is that the crowds are getting larger and larger every year. We are getting two or three hundred more people at this ceremony, which is tremendous. It shows the importance that the Canadian public attributes to this day and to this event.
However, there is an unfortunate trend, and I guess it is a fact of life. The number of World War II veterans on parade have become less and less each and every year. Six or seven years ago we would see hundreds of them on parade and that is down substantially, which is unfortunate.
I mentioned my riding of Charlottetown. It is very proud to be the location of the headquarters of the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 1,200 workers in that department. There is also another office in Ottawa. These people do a tremendous job and I am proud of each and every one of them. I deal with them, represent them and talk to them. I get a lot of the veterans issues not only in November during Veterans Week, but each and every day of the year.
One tremendous event has happened in the past year. That is the passage of the Veterans Charter, which came into effect on April 1 last year. I believe every member of this House can take some credit for that. It was an opportunity where all parties put aside their partisan differences. It did not take days, it took hours to pass that tremendous legislation. The honour bestowed to veterans is a great credit to the House. The charter sets out a new way to deal with the injured veteran and it will pay dividends in the years to come.
I will be supporting the motion before the House. It is an omnibus motion. It contains five separate issues all relating to veterans but not relating to each other. Some of them are simple. It is a matter of just doing it. I do not understand why we do not just do it this afternoon, and I will speak to that. Some are not simple. The adjustment of the pensions for veterans when they turn 65 years of age is not a simple matter. I am not going to say this is a simple matter and that the Minister of Finance can do this with the stroke of a pen.
I will support the motion to send it to committee so the matter can be studied, analyzed and reviewed. We have heard some costs of $200 million. I heard one recently of $20 billion, so let us get the figures and see what we can do to improve the pensions for veterans. That is my objective.
One thing I will not call it is a clawback because it is not. Anyone who calls it a clawback, really does not understand how that pension was calculated. It is a blending of the Canada Pension Plan and that is the way it has been calculated. It has been done like that for years. It is the same as other federal, provincial and municipal civil service pensions, but, again, it is a matter to refer to committee.
However, let us talk about some simple issues. The first one is the veterans independence program. At one time until about three years ago, it was available for the surviving spouse of deceased veterans for a period only of 12 years after the death of the veteran.
Through lobbying of a lot members on both sides of the House, that was changed to allow the surviving spouse to get it for his or her remaining years, and in most cases it was a her. That was a tremendous development, and it is one for which I believe every member in the House deserves some credit. However, in doing that, we did not go all the way. Right now there are surviving spouses whose husbands perhaps were entitled to the benefits of the program, but died before the program initially came into existence, and I believe that was 1991.
I lobbied hard, as did other members, to get it extended to all surviving spouses. When I campaigned during the 2004 election campaign, I ran across three or four surviving spouses. They told me what they thought. They asked me why they could not get the benefit of the veterans independence program. I did not have an answer for them. It was very unfortunate.
We as parliamentarians have to correct this and we have to correct it immediately. The husbands of two of those surviving spouses were amputees. I would surmise and speculate that the reason they died prior to the earlier date was because they suffered a premature death due to respiratory and circulatory issues. As a result, these surviving spouses are not eligible for this very small benefit.
The party in government made a simple promise. It promised to immediately rectify this issue. Immediate in my background means doing it right away, and already nine months have passed. Is there anyone in the House who can explain to me why we cannot do it right away, and by right away, I mean today?
We had a very unfortunate incident yesterday where the party in power broke a promise. I think for generations to come, November 1 will be known as “black Wednesday”. Maybe we can follow “black Wednesday” with “white Thursday”, do the right thing and pass this provision, which I do not think is a big budgetary item. Members know where I stand on this issue.
The first step deals with section 31(1) of the act, dealing with the provision that the new spouse of a veteran who gets married later in life is not eligible as a survivor under his pension. I do not think it is appropriate, but it has been referred to as the “gold digger clause”. That goes back to an earlier era of situations like the dowry where the wife was a chattel of the husband. We have moved on from that. That is a very sexist issue.
We should just move on and pass this and not wait another day. We should get it done right now.