Madam Speaker, I truly appreciate the opportunity to speak to this issue, and I will mention why.

First of all, it is clearly an important issue. Income security in retirement is something that people work toward. However, people do not really give much thought to it until they approach retirement in their later years.

When pensions were solid and secure, our society really did not pay that much attention to the potential risks in the future if the economy changed, for example if returns on investments diminished or if companies, because of newly competitive environments, faced financial difficulties and sometimes even insolvency and bankruptcy.

Early on, when the population was a bit younger and the demographics were different, people just paid into company pensions and really did not think about the possibility that someday that nest egg might not be there or that it might be smaller than anticipated.

My engagement with the issue began shortly after I was elected in 2004, and it was because I have very many constituents who worked for companies whose pension plans did not produce at the end because of bankruptcy.

I have many former Nortel employees living in my riding of Lac-Saint-Louis. There was a major Nortel facility down the highway from where the riding is located. Many of my constituents had very good careers there, only to find out one day that their pension payments were going to be much less than they had anticipated.

I also have many Air Canada employees living in my riding of Lac-Saint-Louis. While the company is doing very well today, there was a time when we did not know if the company was going to continue to be a going concern, and there was actually a deficit in the pension plan. I am not sure exactly where things line up with the pension plan right now, but it is much better than it was maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

Various stakeholder groups have been meeting with me over the years, including the Nortel pensioners and the Air Canada Pionairs, who are the retirees of Air Canada. As I said, I have many Air Canada employees in my riding because the riding is in close proximity to the airport.

Until not long ago I also had a facility called Indalex in my riding that made the news about pensions. That case went to Ontario Superior Court and has become a rather well-known pension case.

The government has also been engaged with this issue. Groups like CARP and others have interacted with the government to press for greater protections for pensioners, and the government has listened. It may not have come up with all of the solutions yet; there may be more solutions coming in the future to what is an extremely complex problem.

While the issue of pensions is important and while it concerns a growing number of people who are focused on it, it is also one of the more complex issues. It is a financial issue. It involves markets. Anything that involves actuaries is by definition complex, and it may be a little hard to understand all the facets of it.

The government has taken the issue seriously. In budget 2018, the government committed to undertaking stakeholder consultations and consultations with the broader Canadian population on measures that could be taken to ameliorate the situation beyond what many groups have called for, and by that I mean the solution of giving superpriority to pensioners in bankruptcy proceedings.

However, the government, while it stopped short of that, for now anyway, did take the issue seriously and tasked the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development to undertake consultations. These consultations were undertaken, and we saw some results of these consultations in the 2019 budget.

Francis Scarpaleggia

$519,285.00