Hon. Mary Coyle: Welcome, minister. I’m a proud Nova Scotian, but I’m concerned that in 2021, our provincial electricity mix included 47% — almost half — from coal. Our province just approved the reopening of the Donkin Coal Mine for seven more years. My colleagues — Senators MacDonald and Gignac — asked you about the Atlantic Loop, which will connect our grid to hydro power from Labrador and Quebec, as you well know. Emera has paused their spending on the Atlantic Loop in response to provincial electricity rate caps, as you know.

Minister Wilkinson, you reiterated the government’s commitment to the Atlantic Loop. Could you elaborate specifically on how you will work with Nova Scotia to move this critical project forward?

Hon. Mary Coyle: Honourable senators, as we meet today in the Senate of Canada on the unceded lands of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people, we have before us a bill at second reading, Bill C-228, which is fundamentally about fairness, justice and accountability for hard-working Canadians, their families and their communities.

It’s a bill about income security and financial security for a significant number of Canadian seniors. It’s a bill about parliamentary oversight and the prevention of further pension erosion and vulnerabilities in our country. It is a bill about my friends and neighbours, and yours, and it is a bill that is, unfortunately, too late for my friends Anne and Peter.

I do not intend to speak for long; rather, I will encourage us to send this bill, with its important pension protection objective, to committee for a thorough and thoughtful study.

While some colleagues in the other place had originally asked for the bill to be fast-tracked and moved quickly to Royal Assent, I would urge our Senate committee studying the bill to do so with great care and attention, as the last thing we would want is to cause unintended negative consequences to people paying into defined benefit pension plans or those reliant on payments from them.

And, of course, as Senator Yussuff has said, we would not want the consequences of not finding a way to protect our pensioners.

Colleagues, we have heard about previous bills with similar intentions — Bills C-253, C-405, C-259 and C-225 — and we have heard that the House of Commons sponsor of this Commons public bill, the Member of Parliament for Sarnia-Lambton, Ms. Marilyn Gladu, intends this bill to accomplish three things. The first two are focused on ensuring the health of defined benefit pension funds and the last one is focused on fairness and priority being given to workers and pensioners in the case of the bankruptcy of employer companies.

As you have heard, it would require that an annual report on the solvency of pension funds be tabled in the House of Commons for greater transparency and oversight. It would create a mechanism to transfer funds into a pension fund to restore it to solvency or to ensure the insolvent portion until the funds could be restored. Third, in the case of bankruptcy, pensions would be paid out to retirees ahead of large creditors and ahead of bonuses to executives.

Given the nature of these three key elements, changes are therefore required to the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985; the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act; and the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.

Honourable senators, we have heard from our colleagues Senators Wells, Yussuff and Downe about the many devastated and rightfully aggrieved pensioners from Nortel, Sears, Co-op Atlantic and others. Debate in the other place also cited Eaton’s, Cliffs Natural Resources and General Chemical.

I mentioned earlier that this bill is unfortunately too late for my friends Anne and Peter. My friend Anne and I are very similar in some ways. We were both born in 1954; we both come from families of seven children; we both have children and grandchildren whom we cherish; we both live in Antigonish, Nova Scotia; and we were the first two women vice presidents at St. Francis Xavier University. We have enjoyed satisfying careers, largely working in the not-for-profit sector where defined benefit pensions were non-existent.

Unlike mine, Anne’s professional career was cut short by severe health problems and accidents. Although she remains as active and productive as possible, writing and creating art when she is able, Anne experiences a lot of limitations in our ableist world. Identifying as a person with disabilities, Anne cannot drive anymore. She relies on a wheelchair to get around, and her severe health and pain management issues can be very consuming and expensive — and I underline “expensive.”

Anne’s husband, Peter, is older than she is. He also has cherished children and grandchildren. Peter had a very active and productive career, in his case as a professional forester. Peter worked for Stora Enso, a Swedish forest products company in Port Hawkesbury, Cape Breton, for 27 years. He was also a very skilled volunteer designer and builder of many of the beautiful nature trails in our area.

Unfortunately, fairly early into his retirement, Peter fell and broke a hip, and he developed dementia, which ultimately caused him to require specialized care in a long-term care home in our town.

Like many Canadians, Anne and Peter worked hard, saved for their retirement and were disciplined in trying to pay off their mortgage. For 27 years, Peter paid into his company pension plan, along with his coworkers. Stora was sold to an American company, NewPage, in 2007.

Unfortunately, the case of Peter, and his fellow Stora and NewPage colleagues, is another example of a company — NewPage — declaring bankruptcy in 2011, and its workers and pensioners were left holding the bag. NewPage was ultimately sold to Pacific West Commercial Corporation in 2012, which wanted nothing to do with pension plan liabilities. The mill now operates as Port Hawkesbury Paper.

As a result, after 27 years of service and his deferred wages being contributed to the pension plan, which, at the time, wasn’t that high in the first place, Peter’s pension was cut by almost one third, leaving him with a very basic level of pension income, close to the equivalent of the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit — and we know what that is. It is not the amount that he and Anne were counting on when they were planning their retirement and certainly not what they need, given their multiple and cascading health problems.

Anne believes the impact of the stress and trauma they have experienced due to the shock of the bankruptcy and their resultant financial insecurity has also exacerbated their many health problems.

They didn’t lose their house — not at first, anyway — although many others did, but they did have to ultimately sell it to compensate for income lost and in order to support their health care and other costs of living, which we all know are only going up.

Anne tells me now that, however difficult it will be, she is looking into somehow finding paid employment. In a conversation with Anne this morning, she said that Peter paid thousands and thousands of dollars of his wages into his pension, and that it was his money and the money of his colleagues that went to pay New York lawyers, creditors and shareholders. She also acknowledged that although losing a third of Peter’s pension has been extremely devastating for them, many forestry workers were hit with deeper cuts — more than that 30% — because their pension funds were in even worse shape.

Colleagues, I tell you the story of Anne and Peter, a story of vulnerable seniors with severe health issues facing a future of financial insecurity, because this bill, Bill C- 228, is about people like them and preventing that kind of injustice from happening again and again to Canadians.

As I said, unfortunately, this law comes too late for Peter and Anne, and the other Stora/NewPage pensioners. Colleagues, in 2012, the year after NewPage declared bankruptcy, the Superintendent of Pensions indicated that only 43% of the then 131,439 Nova Scotians enrolled in defined benefit pension plans had fully funded plans at that moment.

We know there are many people across Canada today who are vulnerable to similar pension losses.

Honourable colleagues, it is time to bring these serious pension vulnerability issues out of the shadows and into the light, and to find effective ways to protect our valued seniors.

Honourable colleagues, let’s send Bill C-228 to committee. Let’s ensure justice, fairness, accountability and dignity for Canadian seniors. As Chris Lewis, the Member of Parliament for Essex, said in his second reading speech on Bill C-228 in the other place, “. . . It is always a good time to do the right thing.” I would add it is, frankly, high time to do the right thing. Wela’lioq, thank you.