Mr. Chair, I commend the Liberal member for York West for all her tremendous work over the last few years in moving the pension agenda forward in Parliament.
Pensions have been a major priority for the Liberal Party and myself for the last few years. The party has already announced substantial proposals to improve the Canadian pension plan system.
As members may know, I was at the union press release in Whitehorse for its proposals and release of the CPP.
I am going to do something this evening that no other speaker will do. I am going to list four specific problems with existing pensions or proposals for improving pension plans. The government could act on these four problems or not. I predict that all the government members who speak tonight will wax eloquent on their support for pension improvement. We will see if it is just rhetoric from how they deal with the four problems people are expressing that I raise this evening.
The first is the simplest as it only requires providing some more required details on the government's announced plans to improve the Canada pension plan, CPP. However, as all members of Parliament are aware, the CPP is intricately interwoven with the Government of Canada's superannuation plans for the military, RCMP and government employees. There are complicated calculations bouncing payments between superannuation and CPP, depending on the retirement ages that people choose to receive their benefits from these pensions.
Dorothy Drummond and our Seniors' Information Centre want to know how the government plans to integrate their new CPP proposals with these plans. On the website announcing the CPP changes, the government does not explain how the new CPP will be integrated with the Public Service Superannuation Act or the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act.
Seniors and elders want to know this and I am confident the government will be coming forward with all these details, as it should, before Christmas.
Problems number two and three deal with aspects of military pensions. Problem two deals specifically with reservists' ability to be eligible for pension benefits. Reservists across the country owe a debt of gratitude to reservist Mark Evans-Ehricht for preparing the following comments.
Remembrance Day is still fresh in our minds. Canadians demonstrated deep concern for the welfare of our veterans. Veterans spoke out about their needs. The work of Remembrance continues. Systemic injustices need fixing.
Reservists serve Canada. These men and women give us unique service. Reservists step away from the safety and security of their families, communities and employment, put on military dress and dedicatedly take up military arms on behalf of Canada.
Few other Canadians place themselves in harm's way for Canada like this. About 25% of Canada's Afghanistan forces are reservists. What would we do without them? They are veterans.
Reservists take care of Canada. They do their part. Parliament's role is to reciprocate, to be fair to them. That is our role. That is our least service to them. Ensure the rules of their service make sense, rather than offend common sense.
Military reservists deserve one simple, fair and reasonable change to one pension rule. The previous Minister of the Treasury Board confirmed, in writing, that the laws of in the Public Service Superannuation Act, combined with the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, have just one pension eligibility rule that applies to all the Canadian Forces, and for all federal employees.
That rule is that a person must work continuously for six months for pension benefits to apply. This is a huge barrier for reservists.The six months of consecutive service rule is only fair to persons working long continuous time periods. Almost everyone in service to the Government of Canada qualifies under that rule, except reservists. That is simply wrong.
This rule should not apply to reservists for their service to Canada. They serve shorter periods of time, a sequence of weeks, or of months is the norm. Very few serve six continuous months and longer. So this rule shuts almost all reservists out of superannuation benefits for the time they serve Canada.
That is what happens when only a full-time rule exists and applies to those whose service is by its nature part-time. This one size fits all rule defies common sense. Whether this situation was intended, or was intentional, which would be terrible, it is systemic unfairness. It is wrong. It is a flaw. It can be corrected simply, Parliament can correct it. Reservists need their own rule.
This issue is ripe for all party support. All parties support basic fairness for our troops, the full-time and the part time. To start collective thinking on this, I propose two months of consecutive service as the standard for reservists. It would accord with part-time service. It would be a vast improvement. It seems fair.
The cost would need to be determined. I expect it would be well within our means; a cost we must afford.
In fairness to our serving reservists, making the two month service rule retroactive must be considered. It would allow reservists to buy back service periods of two consecutive months or more. Their service to Canada is as dedicated as our service. They stand on guard for us all.
He thanks the government for looking into and solving this problem quickly out of respect for these reservists who dedicate so much for our nation.
Problem three is also related to the military and the people in the forces should thank the navy reservists for bringing the point forward. The fact is that the government has severely short-changed members of our forces by not providing sufficient human resources staff to compute and calculate the military pensions for regular forces and reservists in a timely fashion. Members of the forces are waiting months to have their requests to buy back pension time calculated. This is totally unacceptable and I hope the government will act quickly to deal with this problem that is hurting employees of our armed forces who sacrifice so much for us.
The fourth and final issue is a very serious set of problems the government has created for its own government employees with the centralization of Public Service Superannuation Act services.
I provide information from the Yukon government and employees' unions. Presently, the Yukon government employees are part of the public service superannuation plan. The Yukon government, at no cost to the federal government, does a lot of the calculations for employees approaching retirement, looking to buy back service, start benefit payments or collect survivor benefits. Now, all of this is being taken away and being centralized in New Brunswick, thousands of miles from my constituents who previously could just walk in to a local office and get the answers they needed as they prepared for retirement.
The Yukon government has noted that some wait times have extended as long as four to five months between an employee's retirement date and the receipt of pension or benefits. How would the minister or her staff or the parliamentary secretary or the employees in the lobby providing answers feel if their income was interrupted for four or five months because of their government's disastrous mistake? These are the most vulnerable seniors who can least afford these long delays in getting their payments.
The Yukon government may be late in getting information on whether the employee is eligible for severance annuity or allowance, which just exacerbates the situation and seniors' financial precariousness.
The employees cannot attend pre-retirement seminars as they cannot get their personal information in time. These employees could also build up huge future deductions from their limited cheques because of delay in information that puts off for months buy back deductions, which then accumulate to huge amounts. Other benefit entitlements and information and survivor benefits will also likely be delayed.
These unacceptable delays and lack of effective timely service is no way to treat senior citizens, those government employees who have dedicated their lives to providing important services for us all.
It is up to the federal government to move quickly to solve these four administrative problems. They are not difficult to solve. They could be fixed fairly easy. However, as a result of these problems, the government is hurting our most vulnerable Canadians, military and government employees, senior citizens who have done so much for our country and who do not deserve to be treated like this in their sunset years.