Luc Desilets

[Privilege, December 16th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, this has been a rather peculiar Monday, a day full of surprises, twists and emotions.

I would like to ask my colleague a quick question. Does he realize that this systematic filibuster goes against the Conservatives' own motion to refer this matter to a parliamentary committee?

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I absolutely love the member who just asked me a question. I had the opportunity to serve with him on a memorable mission. I was afraid of him before the mission, but he has since become a friend.

His first question is about the 60-year age limit, and it is a good one. People can join the army at 17 or 18. They might stay in for 10 years or they might have a very long career. I understand that we have to pick a number and set a limit, because there has to be a starting point and an end point. Right now, the age limit is 60. Yes, that is something the committee considered.

Honestly, I do not know what the ideal solution is. This whole issue involves very serious actuarial data. People can enlist in the army when they are young or when they are older. Age 60 is the limit. Personally, I do not think that is all that great. We might change that when I am the minister. Just kidding. Age is indeed a challenge in this file.

As far as PTSD is concerned, my colleague is absolutely right. I do not think many military personnel leave the forces and are diagnosed with PTSD right away. It can happen five, 10, 15 or 20 years later. I have a good friend in my riding who served in Afghanistan, but it was only about two years ago that things really started falling apart for him and he was diagnosed. If there had been adequate follow-up and support when he left the armed forces, he might not be suffering from PTSD today, as such a high percentage of military personnel are. As I said, early support and prevention are key.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I see that my colleague wants to take this in a more political direction. Some might say that is why we are here.

Yes, the Conservative Party can certainly be criticized for some things, including the cuts it made, but it also did some positive things. Personally, I am more interested in finding solutions. Anyone can hit others when they are already down. They can hit, ask and demand, but I prefer to compromise and come up with solutions that work for everybody. Talking about parties and cuts and all that is not the solution. The solution is about human beings. People are at the heart of this issue. We must ask ourselves how we can respond appropriately, no matter which party is in power. With our parties, our platforms and our agendas, we all have our own way of responding to these issues. Again, as I said in my previous answer, I think we have to remember the human aspect. Veterans Affairs is one of the few departments that deal with human beings.

People should be at the heart of everything, and we should take much better care of them than we do, regardless of the party in power.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, my colleague usually has some very brilliant questions.

For me, the number one recommendation has to do with support and assistance for members leaving the armed forces. We deal with this regularly in our constituency offices. Programs exist, but they are not necessarily sufficient or adapted. We understand that; it is all part of a big machine. However, help and support should be facilitated. Once again, veterans defended our values and our democracy. We owe them so much, even though they are no longer in the military, just as we owe seniors so much.

I recently stood by a soldier who was on a hunger strike. He says he went from “hero to zero”. He is asking for help, but he does not know how to ask for it. He needs someone to support him when he asks for help. I would say that it is often this type of thing, no matter which government is in power.

We do not forget veterans, but we do not think about them very often.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, we are talking about 400,000 public servants who are affected or who could be indirectly affected. I was saying that, if the government were to go along with the requests for adjustments, then collective agreements would have to be reviewed. As for how things work in Quebec, that is a different story. We are talking about federal benefits here.

That would be my answer.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, we are debating the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs entitled “Survivor Retirement Pension Benefits (Marriage After 60)”.

This is a complex issue. In October and November 2022, the committee met three times for a total of six hours and heard 19 witnesses. I am going to dive right back in there. I learned only an hour ago that I was supposed to speak about this. I will do my best, but I repeat that it is a complex issue.

We cannot say that it is all the government's fault, but we also cannot say that it is all the veterans' fault. Still, there is work to be done. To set the stage and understand the issues at stake, I would like to start by presenting six factors as something of an appetizer.

Most pension plans, regardless of whether they are public or private, contain clauses that guarantee benefits for the beneficiary's surviving spouse or children should the beneficiary die. That is standard practice. The terms of these clauses can vary greatly, but they almost always involve a clear distinction between the individual who was still paying into the plan at the time of their death and the beneficiary who may be entitled to benefits. Let us start with that.

There is another very important factor. If the individual was retired at the time of death and was already receiving pension benefits, most pension plans will consider their spouse eligible for a survivor's benefit if, and only if, they were already the beneficiary's spouse before the beneficiary retired. That is the crux of it.

In other words, if a beneficiary enters a new relationship, a new union, after having started receiving pension benefits, the beneficiary's spouse is not eligible for a survivor's benefit if the beneficiary dies. That is the long and short of it. We at the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs inherited this file.

In the case of Canadian Armed Forces retirees, spouses are also excluded from the survivor benefit if they began their relationship after the member began drawing pension benefits. However, there is an exclusion clause in the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act that does not apply when the member begins drawing benefits, but instead when they turn 60.

Sixty is the mandatory age of retirement in the CAF. In other words, if a military member begins receiving pension benefits at 55, the exclusion clause does not apply immediately. If the retiree marries or remarries before reaching 60 years of age, the retiree's spouse would be eligible for survivor benefits. This is the important part.

The act contains a clause entitled “Marriage after sixty years of age”. Apparently, this is a common occurrence. I cannot wait until I am 60 so I can get married again. Oh wait, I forgot, I have never been married. The “marriage after 60” clause, named after the title of subsection 31(1) of the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, has been frequently criticized in recent years. In the 1990s, the courts ruled that this “marriage after 60” clause was not discriminatory.

That is a problem too, and it may raise some issues. The courts ruled “that the clause was not discriminatory, or if it was, the resulting exclusion was based on reasonable grounds.” That is the context.

In the Minister of Veterans Affairs' and Associate Minister of National Defence's 2015 and 2017 mandate letters, the Government of Canada made eliminating the “marriage after 60” clawback clause an absolute priority “so that surviving spouses of veterans receive appropriate pension and health benefits.”

The first problem is that it did not happen. It was in the minister's mandate letter, but it did not happen.

The government subsequently abandoned the legislative approach [which we might say was the ideal approach] and did not eliminate the “clawback clause.” In Budget 2019, it instead announced the creation of a Veterans Survivors Fund:

To better support veterans who married over the age of 60 and their spouses, Budget 2019 announces a new Veterans Survivors Fund committing $150 million over 5 years starting in 2019–20 to Veterans Affairs Canada. With these funds, the Government will work with the community to identify impacted survivors, process their claims and ensure survivors have the [adequate] financial support they need.

With all that said, we can see that there are some huge challenges, such as gender equity, equity between veterans and the general public, and equity between benefit plans. Another challenge concerns the fact that 80% of veterans or military personnel who leave the forces are men, and 20% are women. Obviously, this has huge financial implications. If 80% of veterans or military personnel who leave the forces are men, it means that 80% of the spouses of these veterans or military personnel are women who may not inherit or receive an adequate pension. The amounts involved are huge.

The transfer in question is not easy. This is not how things usually work in the public service, which is relatively gender equal. Obviously, this issue is extremely important.

What impact does this have? If the military pension plan were to be harmonized with the public service pension plan, the financial impact would be enormous. A brief assessment from two or three years ago mentioned the figure of $1 billion. This means it would cost $1 billion just to put the plans on an equal footing. In fact, it would have an even greater impact.

If the government were to do that, which we all want it to do because we want everyone to be treated properly, it would also have to renegotiate the collective agreements for 400,000 public servants. We cannot use legislation to equalize, adjust or change plans without anticipating that other public servants might react. They are going to put their hand up and say that they, too, deserve it. A few things will then need to be reviewed and adjusted.

Clearly there is quite a confrontation or discussion ahead for the government and the unions. Despite the fact that it was in the mandate letters, the government then considered the possibility of injecting the tidy sum of $150 million over three years to try to compensate. It did it. It provided the money. The problem is how that money is used.

This brings me to the first recommendation of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs:

That the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence work with the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Public Safety to issue a declaration that gives a definitive answer to which department is responsible for survivor pension benefits of Veterans.

As always, when the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs submits recommendations, we receive responses from the government that are practically always favourable. The Government of Canada agrees with this recommendation. Generally, it is the implementation of these recommendations that creates little problems.

This leads me to another recommendation that the committee made:

That the Government of Canada immediately table a document explaining in detail the reasons for creating and maintaining clauses denying survivors' pensions when the relationship began after the pensioner reached age 60....

Two years later, we are still waiting for an answer, a follow-up or potential solutions. In its usual gracious manner, the government responded to the committee's recommendation by saying that it agreed and by explaining the reasons for these provisions. It spent a whole page explaining why it agrees. The problem is not whether it agrees or not. If a solution is being considered, we just want to see it put in place as quickly as possible.

The following recommendation is also very interesting:

That the Department of National Defence and the Department of Public Safety take vigorous action to ensure that members of the Canadian Armed Forces and of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have all the necessary information about their pension plan, and have access to financial advice to make the most informed financial decisions before they retire.

I really like the word “vigorous” in this recommendation. I mention this recommendation because it implies that the retiring member should be advised by someone. There are people in the government who are capable of advising the member. That is not a problem. However, this involves a level of financial planning that mere mortals and military members may not be used to doing. They were deployed, and usually there were people at home who took care of their affairs. They were off doing their job. Significant planning needs to be done. The department is essentially saying that military members should think about putting money aside while they are still serving in combat roles or elsewhere.

Earlier I was talking about the $150 million that the government injected. In theory, that is great. However, when the military member leaves the Canadian Armed Forces, they may not be in the best mental state to ask for help. Many of them end up with post-traumatic stress. Returning to civilian life is not easy. When a person has worn the uniform for 10, 15 or 20 years and has to get dressed the morning after leaving the Canadian Armed Forces, they do not know what to put on. They do not know how to dress themselves. They do not know how to function outside of this society that was regulated to the nth degree. It sounds silly, but that is how it is.

Nevertheless, they are being asked to do that before they leave the armed forces. They are being asked to come up with a financial plan. If not, there is the $150 million provided by the government. That is great. The services are there. That is not the problem with Veterans Affairs Canada. The problem is accessing them. The veterans must not have it done for them. Rather, they must be referred to the appropriate resources, in this case the necessary financial resources, that could make up for it, because this $150 million could be used to enhance or adjust the spouse's pension plan.

Now we are getting into the technical details. I taught plenty of university courses in more than one faculty for 10 or 11 years, and I am pretty good with money matters. However, when we had to look closely at this report, at the implications and the figures, it was a complex affair. When we got to the $150 million and saw that they had access to it, I wondered how I would have reacted. Where would I have gone for help? There is a door I have to knock on, but what do I ask for? That is evidently still a problem for our veterans. The fact that they do not find it easy to ask for help needs to be taken into account. A veteran is a hero, someone who fought for their country, someone who theoretically does not necessarily need help. It is someone who thinks and says they are independent. Just asking for help, in a case like the one we are looking at today, does not come easily.

In addition to all the inherent problems, we have a Liberal government with two departments, the Department of National Defence and Veterans Affairs Canada, that do not talk to each other, that operate in a vacuum. When a military member leaves the military and becomes a veteran, they cross over into another silo, another zone. The fact that the two departments do not communicate obviously creates problems, including those in the case we are discussing today, the survivor's pension.

As I said earlier, yes, they can get help. There are 32 Canadian Armed Forces transition centres. When a member leaves the armed forces, they are entitled to a few hours of training to prepare them for what comes next. Once again, however, they may not be in the best mindset to be making decisions, to be listening, to be seeking help. However, there are people there. There are 32 centres that are there to help.

In conclusion, I would just like to tie this issue in with the Bloc Québécois's request to increase the pensions of seniors between the ages of 65 and 74. Most, if not all, of the people involved in the case we are discussing today fall squarely in that camp. The Bloc Québécois wants a 10% increase because we calculate, based on the figures we have, that this segment of the population needs more financial assistance than anyone else. That is our position, and the government is aware of it. The connection I am making is that we are talking about survivors, pensions at age 60, and so on. Once again, it is seniors who are bearing the brunt of the failures in our system. It is always easy for the Liberal government to target people in this age group, because they probably are not going to take to the streets with signs.

[Syria, December 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to adopt the following motion, which is seconded by the members from Mirabel, Louis-Saint-Laurent and Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie: Given the construction of Mirabel International Airport, which led to the expropriation of thousands of families in 1969, given that the families who lost their homes, land and community following this forced expropriation are suffering from trauma and unspeakable pain, and given that commercial flights at Mirabel airport have ended, that this House issue an official apology to the residents of Mirabel who were expropriated in 1969.

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I find it very sad that the Leader of the Opposition would stoop so low as take cheap shots at the Liberal member.

I would like to remind him that there is no proof that eliminating the 5% GST will reduce house prices. For example, since September 2023, there has been no GST on the construction of rental housing, and this has had no measurable impact on house prices.

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives want to eliminate sales tax on new builds, and they are also calling on Quebec and the provinces to do the same, in other words, eliminate tax on new homes.

Does our esteemed member realize that that in no way concerns Parliament, much less the Conservatives? It is a provincial jurisdiction.

[Veterans, December 6th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the Liberals do not even know what it was they paid for. No one checked what the $2.9 million paid in 2019 was used for. Even after the ribbon cutting, with Liberal MPs in attendance, no one knew they had paid for sculptures that named living soldiers among the dead.

It took women veterans to file complaints in 2023. As recently as Monday, the Minister of Veterans Affairs was unaware of the situation when I asked her about it. Five years on, these two sculptures are a monument to federal government incompetence.

Will the minister remove them?