Old Age Security Act
Bill to Amend--Second Reading--Debate Adjourned
February 24, 2022
Moved second reading of Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act (Guaranteed Income Supplement).
She said: Honourable senators, it is my pleasure to rise in the Senate today on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people to discuss Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act (Guaranteed Income Supplement).
The aim of this bill is to exempt pandemic benefits from the calculation of guaranteed income supplement, or GIS, or allowance benefits beginning in July 2022. In other words, vulnerable, low-income seniors will not see reductions in their guaranteed income supplement or allowance benefits as a result of accessing pandemic benefits. Honourable senators, I will explain the bill a little more and expand on why this change is needed.
The bill is very short, but as you would know, it is extremely important to many seniors in Canada who receive the GIS or allowance benefit. As honourable senators know, the government introduced pandemic benefits, such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, better known as CERB, and the Canada Recovery Benefit, or CRB, to support Canadians who lost jobs during the pandemic.
Parliament approved the Canada Emergency Response Benefit quickly in 2020 to help people avoid catastrophic income loss.
Honourable senators, it had to be passed quickly as many Canadians were hurting financially due to the pandemic. I believe that we all understood, when we were evaluating the CERB benefit, how important it was to Canadians.
The CERB and then the Canada Recovery Benefit did help Canadians. The legislation indeed helped millions of Canadians, young and old, through unprecedented times.
These financial supports were set up quickly to respond to the pandemic, and the benefits were made taxable to prevent misuse of the program.
Honourable senators, the following are the specific benefits that will be exempt from the calculation of income for GIS or allowance purposes in future years: The Canada Emergency Response Benefit, or CERB, including any amount that was issued under the Employment Insurance Act; the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit; the Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit and the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit.
Unfortunately, because these benefits were made taxable, some of our most vulnerable seniors have been negatively impacted financially as a result of accessing these support programs. A reduction of their monthly income is significant as too many of Canada’s seniors have limited monthly income. That is because the Guaranteed Income Supplement is an income-tested benefit payable to low-income seniors who also receive the Old Age Security pension.
The allowances are income-tested benefits paid to 60 to 64‑year-olds who are spouses or common-law partners of GIS recipients, or who are widows or widowers.
Every July, an individual’s entitlement for these income-tested benefits is reassessed based on their individual income or combined income from the previous year. The design of these benefits means that they can increase, decrease or even cease according to changes in a person’s annual net income. This ensures that benefits are provided to those most in need — lowest-income seniors.
Here is the inequity that Bill C-12 would address. The Income Tax Act defines pandemic relief benefits as taxable income. Unfortunately, that meant that some GIS and allowance recipients are facing lower monthly benefit payments because of the income they received from these pandemic benefits.
It was recognized that some seniors were hurt financially because of this and it is essential, I believe, to rectify the situation before the next reassessment in July of 2022. This would mean that the financial loss seniors were faced with last year would not be repeated.
The government addressed this financial loss to low-income seniors in the previous year. In their Economic and Fiscal Update 2021, the government allotted funds to those seniors who were negatively impacted by giving a non-taxable, one-time lump payment to compensate for the full amount of the loss.
These seniors will receive their lump sum payment in May of 2022. Officials are working hard to issue some payments earlier than that to seniors who are in dire financial need.
The one-time payment will help alleviate the financial hardship of GIS and allowance recipients who receive pandemic relief benefits in 2020 and who faced a reduction or loss of the GIS or allowance benefits as of July 2021.
The amount of each payment will vary and will be equal to the annualized amount of the reduction in their GIS or allowance benefits. Clearly, this approach is not an efficient way to move forward for future reassessments. So the legislation before us today is necessary to make automatic payments to those most vulnerable seniors, and the funds will be paid in a timely manner.
Honourable senators, the process should be as simple as possible. This legislation will make the process automatic and those seniors who are entitled to the one-time payment will get it automatically, in the same way they received their GIS or allowance benefits, which is monthly.
Honourable senators, Bill C-12 corrects an unforeseen inequity within the pandemic financial support programs. It will ensure that seniors will not see a reduction in their Guaranteed Income Supplement or allowance benefits again if they received or are receiving pandemic benefits.
Honourable senators, that is the purpose of this bill. If Bill C-12 passes, federal pandemic benefits would be exempt from the calculation of GIS and allowance benefits beginning in July of this year. Bill C-12 will give seniors peace of mind and certainty knowing that their Guaranteed Income Supplement will be protected and that pandemic benefits won’t negatively impact their GIS in the future.
As I mentioned earlier, honourable senators, Bill C-12 may be a short bill, but it is extremely important to many seniors in Canada and I hope that you will support this bill. Thank you.
Senator Cordy, a couple of senators have raised their hand to ask a question. Would you take a question?
Yes, I will.
Senator Tannas, Senator Cordy will take a question.
Thank you, Senator Cordy. This is an important bill. I’m keen to see it go to committee and understand that it will be there soon.
I just wondered what you thought about a scenario and whether the committee should look into it. I’m worried about seniors who were on income supplement, and potentially still are today, who might have been advised by people at Service Canada or an accountant or a relative not to apply for the CERB during that time because it was clear that it would affect their income supplement. Are we setting ourselves up to have a group of people who followed the rules or were advised to follow the rules or understood what the rules were and chose reluctantly not to take the CERB who will now be left behind, while the others who were unaware of the rules and took the CERB will now be compensated for that?
Thank you, Senator Tannas. That is indeed a very interesting question. I had thought about it. I read a few things about situations like that where people may or may not have applied for CERB.
In reading reports from other panels that had listened to discussions about this bill, when that question was asked, they said it’s very difficult to go back two years. It’s challenging to go back to the “what ifs” and say maybe this, maybe that. But I think that you raised a good question. I believe that somebody in your group is deputy chair of that committee. I know the minister and government officials will be appearing some time before we come back next week, and I think that would be a relevant question for them to answer, more so than me.
But the comments I did hear were about the challenge it would be to go back and say maybe yes, maybe no, but I think somebody from your group might be willing to ask that question at committee.
Thank you, if Senator Cordy will accept a question. Senator Cordy, this is a simple but important bill. Thank you so much for making it simple for us to grasp.
My question is about the GIS recipients who experienced a fall in their monthly income. As we all know, when someone is on a tight monthly income, every $10 counts.
I am just wondering if you can share with us what proportion of the GIS community experienced the cutbacks.
I’m not able to answer that question about how many. I read a number somewhere. I paid attention to it. It probably wasn’t as high as I thought it would be, but that would be another good question to ask.
It was very challenging for seniors who are living on a fixed income and suddenly are not receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement. I think that’s why this has come forward, because they recognized that indeed was a problem. Seniors and many are not able to work, and are suddenly not receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement. So that’s why they will be receiving a one‑time payment in May or hopefully a little before May, but March or April for those who are in dire circumstances. They will receive the one-time payment to make up for the fiscal year 2020 into 2021.
If this bill passes, then it will become automatic, and it will be included, as it was previously, on their monthly old age pension income that they receive.
Thank you, Senator Cordy, for introducing this bill.
Honourable senators, Bill C-12 builds upon the vital direct income supports provided by the government throughout this pandemic.
All of these programs, particularly the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, made a crucial difference for many who had lost jobs or income as a result of the pandemic. It enabled people to prioritize the health and well-being of themselves, their families and their communities, with less worry about such fundamentals as how to feed their families or the spectre of eviction.
We continue to applaud the government for the CERB and similar measures, as well as the expressed intention to leave no one behind.
We must also continue to challenge the government to make good on that promise by urging action to address the shameful inadequacies and inequalities that continue to stigmatize, exclude and abandon millions of people below the poverty line.
Bill C-12 is another in a series of adjustments and patches designed to ensure that the income supports flow to people in need, who are too often struggling through the vagaries of a system for responding to poverty that is cruelly distrustful, complex, inflexible and wholly inadequate.
This legislation illuminates how restrictive, competing and contradictory rules around programs meant to provide economic support to those in need, especially those in dire need, too often collide in ways that push those most in need of assistance further into precarity and poverty.
For more than 200,000 of the lowest-income seniors in Canada, accepting the CERB payments they were entitled to in order to try to stay out of financial crisis in 2020 resulted in them losing part or all of the Guaranteed Income Supplement payments they needed to make ends meet in 2021.
In case it was not clear, let us remind ourselves, dear colleagues, that in order to qualify for CERB, these seniors are some of the most economically marginalized in Canada. They are poor past retirement age, who are obliged to work to make ends meet, yet who are working the type of minimum wage and precarious jobs that do not pay them enough to raise them above the poverty line.
Many other types of income supports for those most marginalized have similarly resulted in cuts or clawbacks for those who received the CERB, from social assistance and disability payments in many provinces and one territory, to the Canada Child Benefit.
Bill C-12 would ensure that, in future, seniors should not be penalized with GIS payment reductions for having accepted CERB or similar pandemic supports. This is a wonderful and much-needed step in the right direction.
Most income support programs provide minimal financial support and aggressively and punitively claw back already inadequate assistance if recipients manage to have access to any other sources of income. This design is based on assuming the worst of people in poverty, assuming that they are looking to game the system instead of simply trying to feed, clothe, house and provide for their families. Worse yet, this design keeps people trapped, not just in poverty, but in the near-perpetual crisis of too little to survive on and punitive clawbacks of any monies earned.
Bill C-12 resiles from this approach. It is a welcome step toward anti-poverty policy focused on meeting people’s needs rather than on leaving them in abject poverty.
With this in mind, I speak today to add my voice to the chorus of support for Bill C-12, but also urging further and decisive action to eradicate poverty, including through the guaranteed livable basic income proposed by Bill S-233 and Bill C-223.
Throughout the pandemic, the government has demonstrated a laudable openness to adjusting its income supports to better reach those falling through the gaps. Unfortunately, however, the more than 3.5 million Canadians living below the poverty line have disproportionately borne the consequences of the time that it takes to adjust coverage under this step-by-step approach.
Bill C-12 is a vital measure, but the relief under this legislation, along with a planned one-off reimbursement for past GIS clawbacks, will arrive far too late for too many who have been forced to go without food, shelter or medication since July 2021. As detailed by Campaign 2000, many seniors have had to turn to usurious payday loans to afford rent. Many more have been evicted or face the threat of eviction before these new government measures take effect. Elderly people who lost their housing during the pandemic — and dealt with an unusually cold winter — have been left with absolutely nowhere to go.
For many, the loss of GIS payments also means the loss of other provincial and territorial benefits and services available only to those who qualify for the GIS.
Even once Bill C-12 comes into force, seniors who claimed CERB in good faith and later found out that they were not eligible are still facing the prospect of having to make repayments to the government. The CERB payments they received have long since been used to secure food, shelter and other necessities for survival. At a time when the government too rarely enforces prohibitions on corporate tax avoidance and evasion that cost Canadians billions of dollars, will impoverished seniors be expected to use their vitally needed GIS incomes to make CERB repayments?
It bears mentioning that when we talk about CERB eligibility for those below the poverty line, most of those who were ineligible did not qualify because they had too little income. They did not make at least $5,000 in the previous year.
The CERB was created because of the inadequacy of current responses to poverty. When millions of Canadians who weren’t already in poverty faced sudden economic loss as a result of the pandemic, the CERB was necessary to prevent them from having nowhere to turn but to those wholly inadequate, dehumanizing and stigmatizing provincial and territorial social assistance programs — programs that cannot be accessed until people exhaust all their savings and lose all of their assets and that keep people trapped in deep, deep poverty.
In the absence of more permanent and inclusive measures like a guaranteed livable basic income, 1 in 10 Canadians continue to be abandoned to this unacceptable status quo. How can we justify a program like the CERB that so clearly recognizes that existing systems for responding to poverty are untenable and yet deny supports to the very people trapped within those systems?
The government has already taken vital steps toward more inclusive forms of income support. Last Parliament, it introduced legislation proposing a form of guaranteed livable basic income for persons with disabilities, and it has committed to reintroducing this legislation.
The Guaranteed Income Supplement at issue in Bill C-12, which also operates as a limited form of guaranteed livable basic income, demonstrates what the Canada disability benefit has to offer both in itself and as a further step toward guaranteed livable basic income for all Canadians.
While the circumstances surrounding Bill C-12 reinforce that the GIS has not eradicated poverty and economic uncertainty for seniors, the program has resulted in significantly lower rates of poverty, such that approximately 8% of single seniors now live in poverty, compared to about 32% of single adults under the age of 65.
The government introduced the GIS in the late 1960s, during a time of bold action to address poverty and inequality, seeing it as particularly reprehensible to abandon elderly people in Canada to hunger and homelessness. The lack of more robust support for working-aged Canadians means, however, that too many remain trapped in poverty their entire lives.
To illustrate the difference between social assistance programs available to younger adults and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, or GIS, Dr. Evelyn Forget, an economist and one of Canada’s leading experts on guaranteed livable basic income, refers to the lived experiences of people — people like Bill.
Bill worked at a Winnipeg food bank. He was also on social assistance and a client of the food bank. He lived in a tiny, insecure residential hotel with a shared, unusable shower until his life suddenly changed. On his sixty-fifth birthday, he qualified for GIS. Even though GIS has often failed to raise people above the poverty line, in Bill’s case, it doubled his income. His GIS entitlements provided him with twice what he used to receive on social assistance. As a result, he was able to rent a small apartment with a door that locked and a working bathroom. He no longer had to wear all of his clothes all the time out of fear that others might take his belongings. He had access to his own cooking facilities for the first time and could purchase several cans of beans or chili at a time, preparing his own food at home instead of having to pay extra for food he could eat from a package or lining up for hours at a soup kitchen.
The travesty of Bill’s story is that he had to wait so long, until old age, before he could access supports sufficient to provide even this small amount of stability. Guaranteed livable basic income would give people a meaningful chance to escape cycles of poverty much earlier in life. It would provide people the security and resources needed to regroup and plan for the future that can help people keep poverty temporary instead of permanent.
Those people include children transitioning out of the care of the state with no one to support them; young adults unable to afford post-secondary education or having to balance their studies with full-time work; recent graduates hoping to find a secure job in their field but forced to turn to gig work to try and survive; young families trying to care for children; single moms leaving a home they shared with an abusive partner; workers in struggling industries and people dealing with sudden illness or caregiving responsibilities. These are just some of the people in Canada who face economic uncertainty and for whom Canada’s current support systems too often work like a spider’s web to ensnare them instead of a trampoline that allows them opportunities to bounce back.
Honourable senators, Bill C-12 will ensure that seniors with the least do not lose the income supports that they rely on to survive.
Right now, let’s pass this bill. Going forward, let’s work together with renewed urgency to assist the government to continue the critical work that it has started by ensuring seniors and all in Canada currently struggling below the poverty line have access to the health, social and economic supports they need to not merely survive subsistence but to thrive.
In this way, we can sow the seeds of inclusion and help diminish the divisions that the pandemic and recent events have brought into sharp relief. I look forward to pursuing this with all of you. As the folks in P.E.I. are urging us, let’s get it done.
Meegwetch, thank you.
Senator Pate, would you take a question?
Yes, I will.
Senator Pate, to your point about the overall impact of expanding guaranteed livable income, could you comment, please, on populism and the fact that the research available to us now is that populism, including what we have seen in Canada in the last two weeks, has roots in economic disparity and opportunity disparity?
That was a very good summary of the research that does exist. Thank you very much for raising it.
Yes, as I mentioned in my speech recently regarding some of these issues, it’s key. It certainly is seen as one of the key issues stoking the flames of discontent and assisting in drawing people to go toward individuals and groups that they believe are interested in assisting them but don’t necessarily support their overall well-being.
Thank you.
Senator Pate, let me start by saying that I admire your consistent advocacy for low-income people. I think you point out, rightly, that it is a failure of policy and political imagination that results in these aggressive and punitive clawbacks to income-tested regimes. I’m wondering, though, if you believe that this bill sets the stage to amend policies in other related regimes such as the Canada Child Benefit and disability benefits on clawbacks.
I certainly hope so. Thank you very much for your advocacy on this and in so many other areas as well.
I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-12 receiving second reading and being referred to committee to be studied and potentially amended to correct a drafting error.
On November 24, I raised the issue of this drafting error to Senator Gold here in the Senate during Question Period. The Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1 contains a drafting error related to clause numbers due to an amendment made in the House of Commons that deleted a clause of the bill.
When the bill arrived in the Senate, the government requested that the Senate not refer the bill to committee, where normally our law clerk’s office would have quickly identified such an error and flagged it for the Senate to correct. Had the law clerk’s office not caught the error, I’m confident that Senator Marshall would have. However, because the government asked us to rush, we did not undertake a basic function of our role as a revising chamber. Senators, I see us now, in a rush to pass Bill C-12, making the same mistake all over again.
Colleagues, I’ll leave it to others who are more proficient in financial matters and government databases to challenge the claim by Employment and Social Development Canada that it is unable to implement changes to the Old Age Security, or OAS, system if the bill does not receive Royal Assent by March 4. That rationale will be assessed in the committee examination process.
Rather, colleagues, I would like to go back to this drafting error and discuss why it should cause discomfort. In short, it’s because officials are presently violating the law. What is this error? Under Division 31 of the 2021 Budget Implementation Act, entitled “Increase to Old Age Security Pension and Payment,” section 268 exempts from the calculation of annual income the $500 one-time OAS payment for seniors aged 75 and above. This means that the benefit would not impact the OAS clawback threshold or other income-tested benefits, like the Guaranteed Income Supplement. However, this section incorrectly references section 276 rather than section 275 from the exemption. Section 275 refers to the $500 one-time payment under the Consolidated Revenue Fund. Section 276 refers to unrelated amendments to the Public Service Employment Act.
On November 24, in response to my question, Senator Gold stated:
I have been assured by the government that there will be no impact on the benefits paid or to be paid to Canadian seniors arising from the issue that had been identified following parliamentary approval of Bill C-30.
However, when I spoke with officials in a recent technical briefing, they actually acknowledged the drafting error and said that the government is not following the letter of the law where technically the one-time $500 payment could be counted against OAS and GIS benefits.
Their rationale for why it was acceptable to ignore the law was because they expected, at some point in the future, that this drafting error would be corrected by the Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Program. I point out to you that the last time this program was used was in 2017. Generally, it is not used for one small item; it’s used for a grouping of items.
Honourable senators, according to the Justice Canada website, this program is limited to minor, non-controversial amendments to be made to a number of federal statutes at once — in one bill — instead of making such amendments incrementally. The program also relies on the premise that not a single member of the Standing Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee will object to a change being deemed non-controversial.
Colleagues, if a drafting error resulting in an act referring to a completely different statute, it goes beyond merely being a technical amendment.
ESDC is violating the law in directing its employees to program the database in a manner inconsistent with the law on the premise that, at some point in the future, the drafting error will be corrected. This situation is unacceptable, and the obvious solution is before us right here in Bill C-12.
Bill C-12 is designed to ensure that certain benefits provided during the pandemic do not impact the OAS and GIS benefits of seniors by exempting them from the classification of income under the Old Age Security Act. This is the exact bill that should be amended to fix the error for the one-time $500 payment.
I remind you that the purpose of the Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Program is to make a series of changes when it is not possible to open up the parent act. But the parent act is open here right now. We can fix this error and demonstrate the purpose of the Senate as a revising body.
Colleagues, it’s impossible to reconcile the stated goal of officials to rush the passage of Bill C-12 to be in compliance with an arbitrary — dare I say, artificial — deadline of March 4 so that they can program the database accordingly with the fact that those same officials are also ignoring the legal text of the law respecting the $500 payment. If ESDC doesn’t seem bothered by an actual drafting error, and it’s ignoring the legal consequences of the rule of the law, why is it in a rush to pass Bill C-12 by March 4? That’s a good question.
Honourable senators, I propose the following solution: We take our time to amend the bill and fix the drafting error but also amend the coming-into-force provision to state that the bill is deemed to have come into force effective March 4, effectively undertaking legal retroactivity. ESDC could make its changes, including the correction of the drafting error, with the knowledge that their actions would be legally valid.
Honourable senators, perhaps this is something that the committee may wish to explore so that we are able to do our jobs and ESDC is able to do theirs. Thank you.
Would the senator take a question?
Most certainly.
Thank you for raising this issue.
With respect, I believe that the numbering issue you refer to engages a different section of the Old Age Security Act. I’m also advised that officials already noted that it had no material impact on the delivery of the benefits for seniors and that the government is prepared to correct this measure through future legislative action.
Therefore, isn’t it important that we ensure seniors are not negatively impacted so as to ensure there’s an operational runway so that tens of thousands of seniors are not negatively affected?
Thank you for your question. Yes, I agree that this is very important, which is why I want it to go to committee and have it done correctly.
You mentioned future legislative action. Am I to infer from that that you’re referring to the upcoming anticipated budget implementation act?
Senator Gold, I’m not so sure this is a time in debate for you to be answering questions. Either you have another question for Senator Griffin or we move on.
I have no further questions. Thank you.
May I ask a question, senator?
Certainly.
Thank you, Senator Griffin, for pointing that out. I think a number of us who have been looking at it were certainly very much aware of that.
I was told that could be in the Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Program. We’ve all sat through them where it’s on and on about minor and non-controversial changes that would be required — and Senator Gold referred to that in his question to you. But you also talked about it not really mattering when it passes — it would still be implemented in July, or the end of June for seniors.
Did you read the testimony of one of the officials in the House when he said that it is critical that this be passed by the beginning of March in order for it not to impact individual entitlements for GIS benefits, which would be effective in July? I’ll go back to what his words were:
GIS benefits are renewed every July based on the previous tax year’s income, and therefore the system changes that we make always occur in March, when we shift from the previous tax year to the most recent tax year.
I just wondered if you had read that information from the official and understand the implications of not allowing the change in numbering that you suggested be done through the miscellaneous statutes.
Yes, I understand what the official is saying. I come back to my point: The law is the law. We have a chance here to correct it very efficiently and expeditiously. Let’s do it. It can go to committee. We can vote on sending it to committee today. The committee can meet next week. The committee can report back to this chamber and, theoretically, by Thursday, it can be out of this chamber and back over to the House of Commons.
I’m not sure where their break week lands — I know theirs is not always the same as ours — but the point is that they can fix it quickly and relatively easily via this act, or very shortly via the budget implementation act, and make it retroactive. It wouldn’t be the first time governments have ever done something like that.
Thank you for the question.
Senator Griffin, could you explain why this can’t be done through the process you have just outlined, which is a very short time frame? Is there some suggestion that this could not or would not happen at committee?
Let me put it this way — I don’t know if you were here the other day when I received the answer about Registered Education Savings Plans and why they can’t be protected during bankruptcy proceedings. What I heard back via the Government Representative in the Senate were all the answers why they couldn’t be done. My response to that was this: Let’s find some reasons why we can do something as opposed to why we can’t. If it’s convenient or inconvenient, that doesn’t count. What counts is what is for the betterment of our population. That’s why we’re here.
I’m genuinely asking this because we have had these issues many times before, but can you not propose an amendment? If it’s not accepted in committee, could you not propose it on the floor of the Senate?
It could be proposed on the floor of the Senate if it’s not accepted in committee. I have it in my briefcase.
Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act (Guaranteed Income Supplement).
As explained by Senator Cordy, this bill is straightforward. It contains only one clause that amends the definition of the word “income,” and now even in one clause, Senator Griffin has found out that the government again has messed up. Nevertheless, the bill amends the definition of the word “income” in the Old Age Security Act in order to exempt pandemic relief benefits from the calculation of the Guaranteed Income Supplement or Allowance benefits beginning in July 2022.
Any payments received by seniors under the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act, Part VIII.4 of the Employment Insurance Act, the Canada Recovery Benefits Act, or the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit Act will not be counted as income when determining eligibility for benefits under the Old Age Security Act.
These changes will not impact Old Age Security payments because OAS benefits are not income tested. They will, however, impact Guaranteed Income Supplement benefits and Guaranteed Income Supplement Allowance benefits.
Colleagues, the Conservative caucus supports this initiative. We have been saying for months that seniors who relied on the pandemic relief programs should not be penalized for doing so. It is cruel public policy to offer support to our most vulnerable in the midst of a public health crisis only to claw it back later.
But we do not support the incompetence that made this bill necessary. We are again being asked to fix mistakes that have been made due to the Liberal government’s bad management and habitual contempt for Parliament.
Let me remind you that no sooner had this pandemic begun than the government attempted to grant itself the power to raise taxes, debt and spending without parliamentary approval for almost two full years. January 1, 2022, is when the powers that they were asking Parliament to approve would have expired. Even wartime governments did not have such sweeping powers. Yet, on March 4, 2020, they had the nerve to ask for it in the very first COVID bill, Bill C-13.
It was in this same bill that Conservatives had to fight to get sunset clauses placed on COVID programs, because this government does not place value on being responsible regarding the expenditure of tax dollars. We had to insist that the government table regular COVID spending reports to the House of Commons Health and Finance Committees, because this government does not place value on transparency. We had to insist that the House of Commons Finance Committee have the right to recall Parliament if any abuses were identified, because this government does not place any value on accountability.
We should have known right there that we were in for quite a ride during the pandemic, because, as it turned out, this was only the beginning of their incompetence and their undisguised disdain for Parliament.
In bill after bill throughout this pandemic, the government quickly established a clear pattern of introducing flawed legislation at the last minute without consulting the other parties in Parliament and then demanding that it be rushed through. Senators — with a metaphorical gun to their heads — complied repeatedly for the sake of Canadians.
You may recall the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program for small businesses. It was announced on May 20, 2020, as a program to “provide important relief for small businesses experiencing financial hardship . . . .” The only problem was that the program contained two major flaws that would limit its effectiveness.
First, the program was designed so that businesses would not be eligible for the rent assistance until they had a revenue drop of at least 70%. Second, only landlords could apply for the assistance, not businesses.
Although the Conservative Party flagged these problems within 24 hours of the Prime Minister’s announcement and called on the government to fix them, the government did nothing for 26 weeks. It wasn’t until November 19, 2020, when we found ourselves in this chamber considering legislation to fix the problem identified six months earlier.
The only problem was that the new legislation that introduced the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy also had a fatal flaw. It required businesses to pay their rent before they could apply for assistance to pay that rent.
If you recall, the government was informed of the error after it had already introduced the bill in the House of Commons. They then scrambled to fix the error by creating an amendment. But after erring in the drafting of the bill, they also erred in the drafting of the amendment. So the Deputy Speaker of the House had to rule it out of order.
We ended up with a flawed bill being tabled in this chamber and had to watch the spectacle of the Minister of Finance telling us she was going to instruct the Canada Revenue Agency to ignore the problems in the bill we were about to pass, because the government was going to introduce legislation to fix it at some point in the future.
Let me give you one more example: Bill C-17. This bill was introduced in the House of Commons on June 10, 2020. It did four things: made changes to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy; enacted the Time Limits and Other Periods Act; authorized the Canada Revenue Agency to share information with other government departments to facilitate a one-time payment to persons with disabilities; and, finally, made amendments to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act. The problem was that it did none of these things well, because of the government’s failure to consult.
At the time, the House of Commons was only sitting a couple of days a week. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer suggested that the government take a few more days to debate and amend the bill in order to get it right, but the government refused.
Bill C-17 never made it to second reading. Instead, the government reworked the bill in an attempt to fix the problems and reintroduced it six weeks later as Bill C-20. But once again, although improved, it was still flawed. The government had now delayed pandemic supports for a month and a half because of their refusal to work collaboratively.
Colleagues, I don’t have time to go through all the examples of this government’s incompetence, because I am scheduled to retire in a few more years; we would run out of time before I got to the end of the list. But suffice it to say that all through this pandemic we have had to fight with this government for accountability, transparency and reasonable time frames to consider legislation it wanted passed.
That brings us to the legislation before us today. Bill C-12 is the government’s fix for a problem they created almost two years ago when they introduced the CERB program. Seniors who qualified for CERB payments would find these benefits being included in the calculation of their income, which would impact their eligibility for the Guaranteed Income Supplement, or GIS.
In the Economic and Fiscal Update tabled in Parliament on December 14 last year, the government reported that approximately 204,000 seniors ended up having their GIS benefits cut for a cumulative total of $742.4 million. This comes out to an average loss of about $3,639 a year, or $303 per month.
Colleagues, I want to underscore that the GIS is intended to help low-income seniors make ends meet. A single senior qualifies for GIS if they earn less than $19,464 per year. In other words, they are trying to live on only $1,622 per month, which I think most of us can appreciate is next to impossible.
But remember, this is the upper threshold, which means many GIS recipients live on even less. You can quickly see how a loss of $303 per month would be a crushing loss of income for many seniors.
Now in fairness, this was the very beginning of the pandemic when we were all scrambling to deal with a very uncertain situation. The bill passed through the House in one day and the Senate the next day. There was an urgent need to reassure Canadians that there would be government support available for those who needed it throughout the pandemic. It was not a time to delay legislation in order to get things perfect.
That, colleagues, was almost two years ago. As early as May 12, 2020, the government acknowledged that these benefits were going to cause a problem for Guaranteed Income Supplement, or GIS, recipients. The benefits would be included in the calculation of their annual income, which would impact their eligibility for GIS.
In a briefing document from members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, the Minister of Seniors at the time noted the following:
The Canada Emergency Response Benefit is intended to replace income that has been lost due to COVID-19. It is considered to be taxable income and must be considered when determining entitlement to the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) and the Allowances.
This being said, this will not affect the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) and the Allowances for about a year. Income received from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit in 2020 will only affect GIS and Allowances benefit amounts beginning in July 2021, as those benefits will be based on 2020 income.
So they knew the problem was coming in May 2020. They knew well ahead that it would hit the pocketbooks of seniors in July 2021, and yet they did nothing about it until February 2022.
February 2022 was 23 months after the CERB program was created. It was 20 months since the government admitted that these benefits were going to diminish the income of hundreds of thousands of seniors receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement and nothing was done to address this shortcoming until the government tabled Bill C-12 in the other place on February 8.
Still, then, they didn’t move the bill to second reading for another seven days on February 15.
Then, before the bill even got to second reading, the government moved a programming motion in the House to shut down debate and deemed the bill referred to Committee of the Whole, considered in committee, reported without amendment, concurred at report stage, read a third time and passed. In other words, they just waved the bill through.
Then once the bill was headed our way, Senator Gold, our leader here, asked if we could shorten our speeches and maybe just have the sponsor and the critics speak so we could rush it through this chamber as well.
I found this curious at first, because the bill has nothing to do with getting the $742 million back into the hands of seniors. That allocation will reimburse seniors for money clawed back from them during the July 2020 to June 2021 GIS program year and does not require additional statutory approval.
Yes, senators, you heard right. The $742 million that will be paid out to seniors to reimburse them for GIS clawbacks can be disbursed to seniors with no additional approval by Parliament other than passing the usual interim supply bill that will come to us shortly. This expenditure is already authorized under section 7 of the Department of Employment and Social Development Act which reads:
The Minister may, in exercising the powers and performing the duties and functions assigned by this Act, establish and implement programs designed to support projects or other activities that contribute to the development of the human resources of Canada and the skills of Canadians, to the social development of Canada or to service delivery to the public, and the Minister may make grants and contributions in support of the programs.
If Bill C-12 contains no actual money for seniors and will not change any GIS payments before July of 2022, then why would the government be ramming this bill through the legislative process? The reason we were given was that it is imperative that this bill be passed by March 4 because the Canada Revenue Agency needs to make updates to its programming, which must be completed before that date. If the bill is not passed by March 4, then CRA will not have the legislative authority to make the necessary changes and the window to implement these changes for the next GIS benefit will close. This means seniors would have to endure another year of their GIS benefits being clawed back.
Colleagues, this is unbelievable. For almost two years, the government watched a train wreck approaching in slow motion. They saw it coming as early as May 2020 and yet did not bother to act until now. Now, just before the moment of impact, they are running around flailing their arms in desperation because we have an urgent situation on our hands. We, senators, are compelled to comply with their now-urgent timetable in order to protect seniors from the impact of this government’s incompetence and ambivalence.
Colleagues, as I said earlier, our caucus supports this initiative. It passed unanimously in the House of Commons, and I expect we may see the same outcome in this chamber. However, this support should not be conflated with confidence in the government. For seniors in general, this government is a disaster. Inflation is eating away their purchasing power while low interest rates pushed by the Minister of Finance are preventing seniors from getting a return on their investment that matches the inflation. Each year, seniors get further behind thanks to Justin Trudeau’s reckless policies.
This is regrettable, colleagues, and before you write that off as a partisan viewpoint, I wish to point out that it is being shared by increasing numbers of Canadians, including prominent Liberals. Just two days ago, Stephen LeDrew, the longest-serving president of the Liberal Party of Canada, wrote the following:
The Canada that Canadians now view every day is not the sensible, reasonable, and generous society that Canadians of all stripes have built up over many generations.
It has become polarized, nasty and barely recognizable.
Just listen to people talking in stores, on the street, and in meeting places.
Just walk or drive through cities and villages and the countryside, and see the Canadian flags — paired with signs expressing vehement disapproval of our federal government. Loyal Canadians are fed up with their federal government.
And one person is responsible for this — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
He has drastically altered Canadian institutions and norms so considerably that usually calm people are raising their voices in protest.
The core of the protestors in Ottawa and other Canadian centres were angry not only about government heavy-handedness in its pandemic policies, but also the changes being brought about by Trudeau.
He has cheapened public discourse and public life.
He talks so high-minded, yet has a lifelong history of deplorable acts.
He has arbitrarily ruined the lives of many other people who have been supposedly guilty of far less egregious acts than have been proven by photographs against him — perhaps to deflect his own guilt?
Does “do as I say, not as I do” strike home? How about “one standard for the masses, and another for the elites like me?”
His intolerance, and high-handed and ill-founded rectitude has led many to regard the government with disdain, and doubt its ability to get things right.
Colleagues, Mr. LeDrew goes on, but I think I have read enough for you to understand his message. This government does not seem to have the ability to get things right, and the fact that this bill is before us today at the eleventh hour is just one more example of this.
I support this bill. I support it going to committee, but I reject the government’s incompetent, cavalier approach to enacting public policy and I hope that all honourable senators will as well. Thank you.
Would the senator take a question?
Sure.
Senator Plett, out of respect for you and this debate, I did not rise in the course of your debate to raise a point of order, and I will not do that. However, you made allusions to statements that I made about how this bill should be treated which I did not make in the chamber; and if I said anything on that subject, it would have been in the context of a confidential leaders’ meeting. I have never, in the two years I have been Government Representative, treated those meetings as anything other than confidential. I’m going to assume that was inadvertent on your part and I simply want to now move to my question.
In the interests of making sure that the chamber is not under some confusion, I wonder if you could help clarify. Would you agree then that the drafting error to which Senator Griffin referred is not in fact a drafting error in Bill C-12 but is indeed another section of the Old Age Security Act? Would you agree that it is important that Bill C-12 be studied properly but implemented in a timely fashion so that the bottom line of our seniors is not negatively affected?
I think I made that clear at the end of my speech. We support the bill and we support it moving to committee, and we support it moving to committee today, so we are again reluctantly helping this government. Yes, I would say that is in the affirmative to your question.
Senator Plett, would you take another question?
Sure.
Senator Plett, I know that, as sponsor of this bill, you have access to more documentation than ordinary senators do. Have you asked the government for the gender-based analysis plus that would normally have been conducted when the bill was drafted and had to be submitted to cabinet?
We attended briefings on this bill as we always do. No, I did not ask the government for anything personally.
I wanted to know whether the government offered to provide you, as sponsor of this bill, with this analysis, either in its full version or in summary form.
They have not offered it to me, no.
Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
(Motion agreed to and bill read second time.)
