QUESTION PERIOD — Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Business of the Committee
November 2, 2022
My question is to the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In 2010, I was contacted by residents of Prince Edward Island who collect a United Kingdom state pension. These pensions are indexed to inflation for pensioners in the United Kingdom as well as for those living in many other countries, including the United States. However, for U.K. pensioners living in Canada, that is not the case. Not only is this unfair to those who face pensions of declining value as a result of inflation, it represents hundreds of millions of dollars — $450 million, according to one estimate — that is not coming to the benefit of the Canadian economy.
The U.K. government policy stands in sharp contrast to Canada where pension payments are always indexed regardless of where in the world the recipient lives. When I first learned of this situation, I wrote to the finance minister at the time, Jim Flaherty, to ask what the Canadian government was doing to alleviate this problem. He responded that they had been working on it for years, but the U.K. government would not change its position and fix the problem.
Senator Boehm, as the United Kingdom is trying to negotiate a new free trade deal with Canada, this would appear to be an excellent opportunity for the Government of Canada to impress upon its U.K. counterpart that correcting this disparity in order to have all U.K. pensions in Canada indexed is a precondition of any negotiations of a free trade deal.
Taking this into account and the role of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade in examining free trade agreements, could you advise the Senate on what issues your committee intends to study over the next year, and if the concerns I just raised could also be considered by your committee, hopefully before the conclusion of any free trade agreement with the United Kingdom?
Thank you very much, Senator Downe, for your question and your ongoing advocacy on what is clearly an important matter. I would also like to thank you for giving me the proverbial heads-up that you were going to ask the question.
Colleagues, I cannot and will not speak for the government. As you know, Parliament plays no role in negotiating free trade agreements or any other treaty for that matter. However, transparency from the government is important in these matters so Parliament can play its roles of reviewing implementation legislation and holding the government to account. Of course, the committee that I have the honour to chair has a mandate to examine treaties and international agreements. The last such study was on the bill to implement the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, the new NAFTA, in 2020.
In response to your question on the agenda of the committee, over the next year, I anticipate a very busy schedule, especially after more than two years of pandemic restrictions. The committee will continue its major study on Canada’s foreign service — a fit-for-purpose examination — and elements of the foreign policy machinery within Global Affairs Canada. It will continue its comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, otherwise known as the Sergei Magnitsky Law, and of the Special Economic Measures Act, a review mandated by section 16 of the Sergei Magnitsky Law five years after its entry into force. The committee will continue to regularly hold meetings on the situation in Ukraine.
Of course, there are other topics members have expressed the wish to study. The committee also had legislation referred to it just last week, this being Senator Ataullahjan’s Bill S-225, the cluster munitions investment prohibition act. There will likely be more legislation, and if history is any guide, the committee can expect parts of the 2023 budget implementation act in the spring as well.
Related to this specific issue, several members of the committee, including myself, have expressed an interest in studying the progress of existing free trade agreements, or FTAs, because while Canada is exceptionally good at negotiating FTAs, we do not do a very good job of implementing them once they are in force. As you know, on March 24 of this year, Canada and the United Kingdom launched negotiations toward a bilateral free trade agreement in order to replace the Continuity Agreement that is currently in force. I note that before this, when Global Affairs Canada held public consultations between March and April of 2021, Global Affairs Canada received 22 individual submissions and a petition by the Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners with signatures representing 1,266 people, requesting that Canada seek to secure a commitment from the United Kingdom to provide annual pension increases to U.K. state pensioners living in Canada.
In my peripheral knowledge — which is rapidly fading over the past ten years — I do know that the issue was raised by the Harper government, probably after your letter to the late Minister Flaherty. It was also raised with the United Kingdom by the Trudeau government. But to the best of my knowledge, obviously, we do not have any results.
I will not commit to any committee studies on the floor of the Senate, obviously, until we can consult with both the steering committee —
I am sorry to interrupt you, Senator Boehm, but the time for Question Period has expired.
Senators, I would like to make a comment on Question Period. On a normal day, we can get up to 10 or 11 senators asking questions. Today we’re down to six. As senators are very much aware, when we have a minister present for Question Period, questions are limited to one minute, and answers to two minutes. If there were an agreement among senators to do that for regular Question Period, I would be very happy to enforce it.
