Mr. Speaker, I am rising in the House of Commons tonight on behalf of the over 3,000 employees of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories who are concerned about their pensions. These are skilled employees. They used to be employees of Atomic Energy of Canada, but under the former Harper government, a decision was made to privatize the management and operations of AECL assets, so that the employees are now employees of CNL.
In September, a three-year grace period in which they have continued to be included in the public service pension plan will end, and they will be thrown into some new plan, as yet undefined at the time the contract was signed, under the private operator. It has been of great concern to them that they are going to end up with an inferior pension plan.
I have asked in the House before if the government would intervene. The unions representing these workers and the workers themselves have asked the government to intervene and essentially just extend the arrangement that has been going on now for the last three years, wherein the employees would be able to continue contributing to that plan and the private contractor that has been hired to manage it would make the employer contribution. There would be very little cost to government to continue this arrangement, but the consequences for workers are potentially quite severe if they are kicked out of this plan.
It is not just the consequences for the workers. I have heard from the CNL employees who work in Manitoba at the Pinawa site, which some members may know is going to be decommissioned in the coming years. As employees realize they are going to be kicked out of this pension plan and will no longer be contributing to a good pension, and that extra years of service will not matter with respect to their pension, they are starting to look for employment elsewhere. These are highly qualified employees. In the case of Pinawa, these employees know that site very well, which is important for the decommissioning process. To have the people with the knowledge of that site looking at either retiring earlier than they otherwise would, or seeking employment elsewhere at this pivotal moment for the Pinawa site is a real mistake.
Those employees were surveyed just this past September. The survey indicated that 91.6% of the respondents felt that the changes to the pension plan had or would cause uncertainty for their future career at CNL. This is what I am talking about when I refer to people leaving. Ninety-two point three per cent said that the defined benefit pension plan of the public service was one of the motivating factors that attracted them to work at AECL.
An actuarial report commissioned by one of the unions representing these workers stated that staying in the public service pension plan for these workers would be the least expensive long-term solution for the employees and the employer. It provide superior benefits to CNL employees. It has the best human resource management for CNL or its successors, and it would provide better benefits to current mid-career employees, all else being equal. It would facilitate any future transactions involving CNL or AECL employees. It would eliminate the scheduled unfair reduction in the value of the accrued benefits for affected employees. It would reduce the pension plan's administrative and governance expenses for CNL. It would have the lowest immediate transaction costs for CNL and AECL, and would allow the employees of CNL to concentrate on their important work.
I have asked the government before if it has evaluated the cost to government of keeping those employees in the plan. It has not produced the numbers, despite a commitment by the Treasury Board president at committee in November. I want to know now if the government has those numbers and would share them in the House tonight.