Hon. Percy E. Downe: Thank you for your speech, senator. Like you, I support the bill. I think it’s much needed.

I am, however, concerned whenever there’s unanimous legislation from the House of Commons. Unfortunately, I base that on years of experience of what I call their manic behaviour. We had the recent pension bill here that, for years, the House of Commons refused to support and then it’s suddenly unanimous.

As you know, it’s not our job to delay this legislation but to make sure that it’s fundamentally sound in the implementation. I mentioned the Veterans Charter when I was first appointed. The House of Commons spent two and a half minutes in total on the legislation. They sent it to us. We sent it to the Department of Finance; we did not send it to the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee. Who doesn’t want to assist the men and women who serve our country? We passed it only to find out years later from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that it shortchanged our veterans by millions and millions of dollars they would have received if it had not been changed.

So, further to the question recently asked, the Guaranteed Income Supplement is an excellent example of a valid program, but in terms of its implementation — many of us worked on it for years. You had to file income tax or, if you don’t owe any taxes, you don’t have to file income taxes. In my home province, hundreds of low-income seniors were not getting a benefit they were entitled to because they didn’t want to pay somebody $50 to file their income tax when they didn’t have the skill set to do so.

Would you share my concern that, notwithstanding the many people saying to pass this, it’s very important that the Senate committee will do the work the House of Commons committees often do not and make sure we have a superb program, with all the wrinkles out of it, before we pass this legislation?

Senator Cotter: I agree entirely with the sentiment you have expressed, Senator Downe. The challenge is to put that together in an organized way.

But in this context, the bill proposes that be done through regulation, so we will not be able to get a very significant parliamentary oversight of that process. It’s intended to be done in as transparent a way as possible, but the construction of it will reside in regulations, I think.

This is my last observation: The result is that we may be comfortable and satisfied — and this is our job — that the markers are right in this bill. I think they’re pretty good. You may identify some that could be better. But it is consciously intended to be a framework. To be frank about it, that places a significant degree of trust in the ministry and the officials to put it together. There’s quite a bit trust that I’m prepared to repose there.

The nice additional thing is the commitment that the disability community will be engaged with that process every step of the way.

[Translation]