“It’s like a magician, they keep you distracted with one hand, while they pick your pocket with another,” NDP MP Wayne Marston (Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, Ont.) told The Hill Times following Tuesday’s Question Period, just hours after the Conservative majority passed a time-allocation motion for the 11th time in this Parliament to limit debate. The bill will create the new Pooled Retirement Pension Plans, but the bill had not budged after the government tabled it in the House last Nov. 17.
Government House Leader Peter Van Loan (York Simcoe, Ont.) said the government brought in time allocation on the debate because the Conservatives campaigned on the need for new PRPPs in the last election and said there was “enthusiastic support” for the new pension. Mr. Van Loan criticized the opposition parties for focusing on delay tactics.
“Why are they so determined to keep Canadians from having that option? It [time allocation] allows for debate to continue but it ensures we will actually make decisions,” said Mr. Van Loan.
But Liberals and New Democrats said the unexpected move on Bill C-25, which they said was a modest attempt at pension reform that lets corporations “off the hook” and focuses on employee-pooled funds, was a signal the reaction to government warnings about changes to either CPP eligibility or Old Age Security payments, or both, which was fiercer than the government expected.
As late as last Thursday, Conservative as well as opposition MPs were preparing to begin this week’s Parliamentary resumed sittings with a final debate over Bill C-19, the government’s long-promised legislation proposing to dismantle the federal long-gun registry. At the last minute, though, with questions mounting about Mr. Harper’s intent on government pensions, the schedule changed and the government scheduled debate on the pension legislation.
On Tuesday morning, after only a few hours of debate on Monday, Mr. Van Loan brought the vote on time allocation to force an early end to the speeches.
“Why would we want to delay it any further?” Mr. Van Loan said as he overrode Liberal and New Democrat opposition. “What is the benefit of delay and of not making a decision?”
The federal government’s motion will limit second reading to two more days before a vote would take place and before it’s sent off to committee. It then goes to committee, returns to the House and report stage and third reading. Once the House passes the bill, it then goes to the Senate. The bill would allow small businesses to offer workplace pensions.
The time-allocation vote, easily carried by Mr. Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) majority, meant an early vote Tuesday on the private-sector pension legislation, proposals that are likely not widely known in the larger population and that would allow employees and self-employed business people to pool contributions and set up their own pension plans outside RRSPs and the Canada Pension Plan.
Liberal Leader Bob Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) told reporters the government was attempting to prove it is reforming pensions, rather than cutting them, in the aftermath of Mr. Harper’s pension statements at a world summit in Davos, Switzerland last week.
“Absolutely, we certainly saw a lot of backroom manoeuvering last week, which shows they’re desperate to change the channel,” Mr. Rae said. “They obviously, feeling a vulnerability on the pension issue, felt they had to have something to say about pensions, but they’ve still got a lot of explaining to do to the Canadian people.”
“The Prime Minister has broken his word to Canadians on a subject that is of great concern to them, and that is their security in old age. It is unbelievable to me that the Prime Minister would be allowed to get a way with this,” said Mr. Rae, who cited 2011 election promises that a Conservative government would not cut cash transfers to provinces or individuals receiving federal programs like CPP and Old Age Security.
Now a maximum of just more than $500 a month, Old Age Security was introduced in 1926, 40 years before the creation of the Canada Pension Plan.
Mr. Marston noted the NDP and its predecessor, the CCF, led pressure on governments of the day to establish both plans.
After the vote on Tuesday morning, Liberal MP Mark Eyking (Sydney-Victoria, N.S.) said there is little doubt the move over the private pension bill— which the government lined up at the last minute last week—is a “smoke screen” to divert attention from the storm over Old Age Security.
“They’re trying to make it look like they’re doing something for the pensions, it’s all smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Eyking told The Hill Times after the vote. “I think they’re in real trouble over what he said in Davos, as Bob Rae says, ‘From the perch of the Alpines, he says he’s going to pickpocket the seniors.’”
Mr. Eyking claimed he saw Conservative MPs who were unsettled on Monday, as Interim Liberal Leader Mr. Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) took on Mr. Harper over his pension comments. Though Mr. Harper did not mention Old Age Security specifically in his speech last week in Davos, he promised transformative changes to Canada’s public pension system.
He has promised existing recipients will continue to receive the same level of both pensions, with OAS coming directly out of the government’s general revenues and CPP from managed investment funds, but said in the Commons the government wants to ensure the CPP companion benefits remain sustainable in the future. The CPP-retirement qualification could be raised to 67 years of age from 65.
“At the end of the day they’ve got to get off of this channel, there’s a lot of backbench Conservatives over there who were very nervous when Bob Rae was speaking about it in the House yesterday,” Mr. Eyking said.
Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) declined to comment on the government decision to put off debate on the gun registry bill, until next week in favour of the pension legislation.
“The House leader and the Prime Minister, I’m sure, discuss those things, it’s not really my purview,” Mr. Clement told The Hill Times after the vote.
“All I can tell you is I think it’s perfectly appropriate on the first week back to be talking about issues revolving around job creation, and economic certainty and protecting our incomes and wealth creation, that’s a perfectly justifiable topic to spend public time on,” he said.
Original Article
Source: Hill Times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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