Senator Plett: Leader, isn’t it embarrassing that the Prime Minister used President Biden’s visit to hide the truth from Canadians?

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, time has expired. However, Senator Anderson, three senators seem to have questions for you. Are you asking for five more minutes?

Senator Anderson: Yes.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, is it agreed?

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Ask the question.

Senator Clement: Grand Chief for the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne Abram Benedict told my office that his community is concerned about the evolving situation, too. Akwesasne residents have to pass through the Cornwall port of entry, sometimes multiple times a day, in order to do business, go to work or school and seek health care. Long lines and appropriate staffing are already a challenge, he said. Now, wait times are expected to be even longer as more and more people come to the border seeking asylum.

How will the federal government work with communities like Akwesasne to ensure that residents can travel safely without impediment? How can we ensure the Canada Border Services Agency is properly staffed to minimize disruption to residents of Akwesasne and Cornwall?

Senator Gold: I know that work is being done to prepare all aspects of our institutions, law enforcement and others for the days and months ahead.

I don’t have a specific answer to your question, but I am advised that the government has reached out to the community in order to discuss those matters with them.

Senator Anderson: When Ministers Bennett and Miller spoke and appointed the board, they were very clear that they were going to consult. Both were very clear that consultations would happen with the Indigenous groups and with provinces and territories.

In my opinion, this bill has no foundation. The foundation of a bill does not come after it passes. That time has passed.

I also want to point out that the preamble of the bill, which reasserts all the values of meaningful consultation — UNDRIP — are not in the bill; they are in the preamble. They are not legally binding. That should be concerning. A clear example of that is the importance and value of Indigenous languages. Yet, in the bill, the two languages are French and English.

Hon. Scott Tannas: We have run into this before. It seems incredibly ironic that we run into it on this particular bill.

I’m wondering, Senator Anderson, whether you think we should be voting to defeat this bill or whether we should pass it through to committee and have it consider what happened with Bill S-3, where we called government back in and told them to go do the consultation and then come back; that we would hold on to the bill until it is done properly.

Would that be a solution or would you prefer that we just defeat it right now and go back to the drawing board?

Senator Cotter: The metaphor begins in the back row of where the senators were seated in the other place. Seven of us were more or less at the back, and one of the senators — I can’t mention their name, but let me just say I was seated directly behind and near a distinguished psychiatrist from Nova Scotia. This senator, I think in an attempt to honour Senator Wells’ early work sponsoring a private member’s bill on single sport event betting, proposed that we conduct a round of betting on how long President Biden’s speech would be. I think we each contributed about a million dollars to the betting, and we asked the most trusted member of our little group of seven, Senator Clement, to hold the money. To give you an idea of how much trust we had, we insisted on not one but two timekeepers to keep the honesty more or less intact. It was a close call, but the winner was Senator Loffreda.

On reflection, I thought this was a metaphor for life, particularly for this topic. With apologies to Senator Loffreda, the metaphor is, “The bankers always win.”

The Hon. the Speaker informed the Senate that the following communication had been received:

RIDEAU HALL

Mr. Speaker,

I have the honour to inform you that the Right Honourable Mary May Simon, Governor General of Canada, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bills listed in the Schedule to this letter on the 30^th day of March 2023, at 10:03 a.m.

Yours sincerely,

Ian McCowan

Secretary to the Governor General and Herald Chancellor

The Honourable

The Speaker of the Senate

Ottawa

Bills Assented to Thursday, March 30, 2023:

An Act respecting a federal framework on autism spectrum disorder (Bill S-203, Chapter 2, 2023)

An Act for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023 (Bill C-43, Chapter 3, 2023)

An Act for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024 (Bill C-44, Chapter 4, 2023)

Hon. Jane Cordy: Honourable senators, I am pleased to rise today to honour the achievements of remarkable women, including two of our very own senators. On International Women’s Day, Women of Influence+ released their list of the Top 25 Women of Influence Awards recipients. These awards, “. . . acknowledge the unique achievements of diverse women representing various sectors, career stages, and contributions to the advancement of women.”

This year’s recipients include Senator Rosa Galvez, whose environmental work was particularly highlighted. Her career provides an excellent example to young women and girls who, like Senator Galvez herself, may have decided early in life what they wished to accomplish. Senator Galvez, that 10-year-old girl who dreamed of working toward contributing to a cleaner and healthier environment would certainly be proud of all you have done. I know I speak for all senators when I say that we know you are not finished yet. Congratulations.

The other recipients this year are Cheyenne Arnold-Cunningham, Louise Aspin, Kirstin Beardsley, Linda Biggs, Elvalyn Brown, Dr. Vivien Brown, Margaret Coons, Jan De Silva, Lovepreet Deo, Natalie Evans Harris, Allison Forsyth, Haben Girma, the Honourable Karina Gould, Eva Havaris, Nicole Janssen, Janet Ko, Maya Kotecha and Carly Shuler, Dr. Rachel Ollivier, Bobbie Racette, Paulette Senior, Domee Shi, Christine Sinclair and Suzie Yorke. They represent a wide array of careers and achievements, and I offer my congratulations to them all.

In addition to those 25 outstanding women, they also named a Lifetime Achievement Award, and I am pleased to report that it is our very own Senator Dr. Wanda Thomas Bernard.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

Senator Cordy: She has been recognized for her impressive body of work, including her commitment to building a better future for marginalized communities. Wanda, it is my pleasure to once again speak about the continued recognition you are receiving on your life’s work, which has been filled with giving to others.

Senator Bernard was interviewed by Women of Influence+ on this occasion, and I would like to quote some words she shared about what motivates her. She said:

Every action I take is rooted in a critical analysis that always takes me back to my ancestors and how they fought with so little, but left such a powerful legacy. I live their legacy. I live their hopes and dreams, and so I have a duty and responsibility to work in the spaces that I’m in to make things different for the generations coming behind me.

Senator Bernard, you have already established a legacy in your own right, and I know there are so many people who are grateful for the work you have done and the work you continue to do. You have indeed made a difference for the generations to come. You are a remarkable person and a role model for so many, particularly for young women.

Honourable senators, please join me in congratulating Senators Galvez and Bernard along with the other impressive women being honoured at next week’s ceremony.

Thank you.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(On motion of Senator Dalphond, debate adjourned.)

[English]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Klyne, seconded by the Honourable Senator Harder, P.C., for the second reading of Bill S-241, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act (great apes, elephants and certain other animals).

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Your time has expired, and Senator Lankin has a question. Senator Cotter, are you asking for five minutes to answer the question?

Senator Cotter: If I might return more seriously to my remarks, the issue of this balance between capital and labour in both business enterprises and their contribution to a productive society is a challenge in circumstances where enterprises fail, and there are not sufficient assets to compensate the various contributors to the enterprise.

The way in which we answer this question is largely articulated by markets forces, moderated from time to time by government legislation to ensure that forms of — dare I say it — fairness are achieved based on our values. The tension in this conversation is essentially between the respect we show for capital contributions to an enterprise and the contributions made by workers.

I’m not opposed to those who invest capital seeking to protect their investments. Indeed, so much of what we need in our society is the support capital provides that would otherwise not be accessible, but unabated and unmoderated markets forces will always favour the prioritization of capital over labour. The best example — clearly relevant here — is the way in which capital investments are commonly securitized. By comparison, contributions made by workers almost never receive the same level of security.

I’m more comforted that Senator Wells is here so I can refer to him by name, in a good way.

This has enormous consequences in the context of insolvencies and bankruptcies, and here is the simplest way to understand this. I have a friend who, after university, moved to Vancouver and was keen to buy a sailboat. He had a good job, but little money. He described to me his acquisition in this way, “The Royal Bank is now the proud owner of yet another sailboat.”

His point, which I eventually came to understand, is that the bank had taken a security interest — an ownership interest — in the sailboat. The significance of this in bankruptcies and insolvencies is that the assets subject to these security interests, such as mortgages and other kinds of claims and the like, are, to the extent of the security in law, not the assets of the business itself but the assets of the secured lender to the extent of the business’s indebtedness, leaving in so many cases little or nothing for other creditors who lacked the market power to have their interests protected by any kind of security interest. The shortfall in employer contributions in relation to pensions is one such example. Legislation can intervene to moderate situations where market power creates what society generally regards as a form of economic unfairness in these kinds of circumstances.

That is what this bill does. Under the present legislative regime, pension contributions by workers and contracted promises by employers to contribute to worker pensions have lost out when the assets of the failed business are insufficient to cover the pension shortfall because, in law, they belong to the secured creditors. Senator Wells and Senator Yussuff have spoken to the consequences for workers who have legitimately counted on workplace pensions in their senior years, only to discover and suffer the consequences of uncompensated pension shortfalls. The message in this bill is that it is a societally unfair distribution of the assets of the failed business.

As well, there’s a strong argument based on the distribution of risk. Those who invest capital have a range of mechanisms to guard against risk. Risk can be priced in. Risk can be distributed. Risk can itself be refinanced. But for workers, even if they think of the need to protect the value of their pensions, they have no such options. For these reasons, the creation of a super-priority for unfunded defined benefit pensions is compelling. Though I recognize there may be some knock-on consequences, nevertheless, I applaud the sponsor of the bill in the other place — MP Marilyn Gladu — and all members of Parliament, the sponsor of the bill here, the critic and, I hope, all of us for supporting this rebalancing. I applaud those who have fought for so long to achieve this result, often not for themselves but for today’s and tomorrow’s workers.

Briefly on my second topic, the very same societal balance and risk have existed for nearly all employed workers in our society in another context. I want you to think about this question: How many of you are creditors of the Government of Canada? Now, you are probably wondering, when will I get reimbursed for last week’s or last month’s expenses? Or how good is my government pension? But I want to bring it a bit closer to home. You might think yes in all those respects, but the fact of the matter is that for 29 or 30 days every month, you are a creditor of the Government of Canada as you await your pay at the end of the month. We only get paid at the end of the month. Hardly any of us have had the courage to say to our employer, “I’m going to work the month of February, but I would like to be paid on the first instead of the twenty-eighth.” Try that, and I think you wouldn’t get the job.

We are all creditors, then, throughout the month, until we are paid. So is virtually every other employee in this country. Now, fortunately, we do get paid, and probably never think about the risk of not getting paid. But for many thousands of Canadian workers every year, who have done honourable work for their employers — and have also earned contracted benefits like vacation pay — the risk of not getting paid becomes, regrettably, a reality. They are low on the totem pole of compensation for the same reasons — the priority of secured creditors — that have had the pride of place in employer bankruptcies and insolvencies.

I wrote my Master of Laws thesis on this topic of employees’ recovery of pay. It was later incorporated into a chapter of the leading text on employment law in Canada authored by Innis Christie, a distinguished labour and employment lawyer. In fact, some editions were Christie and Cotter — eventually, they got rid of my name.

I wanted to name the chapter one of two versions, and the first is a bit of a riff on the Cool Hand Luke movie. If you remember the movie, you may recall the warden speaking to Paul Newman in one of those southern accents that I can’t do very well. I wanted this phrase to be the chapter title: “What we have here is a failure to remunerate.” I apologize for the weakness of the joke. The second alternative that I wanted to have the chapter called, which didn’t succeed, was “Employees’ Recovery of Pay: Secured Creditors Always Win.”

The fact of the matter is that in every province of the country, and I think in most territories, efforts have been made by provincial governments to try to provide better protection for workers’ unpaid pay. All kinds of imaginative tools have been used such as deemed mortgages and trusts to try to capture the challenge that workers face in cases of bankruptcy and insolvency. Virtually all of them have failed: partly because of these rules about who owns the property; partly because they were thought of as colourable attempts to interfere with insolvency and bankruptcy, which are constitutionally the authority of the federal government.

More recently, a degree of progress has been made, with the support of the federal government through the Wage Earner Protection Program and a small super priority which provides a backstop, to some degree, in cases of bankruptcy and insolvency.

Parenthetically, when it comes to almost any one of these progressive initiatives in favour of bankers, Senator Yussuff’s fingerprints are on it, to his credit.

In this area, even by the Government of Canada’s own assessment, perhaps as much as half of employees’ promised and earned compensation is never recovered.

These claims are invariably smaller than the pension shortfalls that we’re talking about, but I would like you to think about many of these workers. They’re often the last to know that their employer is in financial trouble. They’re living from paycheque to paycheque and suddenly discover that they have lost their jobs and, for the owed wage or salary that they have earned they will have to jump through hoops to collect, in many cases, at best, half of that money. In the meantime, their own creditors — landlords, mortgage holders, grocers, car payments, Visa bills, and so on — are knocking at the door expecting to be paid.

An amendment to better protect these unpaid wages, severance and vacation pay and address this urgent societal unfairness was widely supported in the other place but was ultimately rejected there. It is tempting for me to press forward with an amendment to this bill to address a continuing anomaly and unfairness — a passionate concern of mine for over 40 years — but getting private members’ bills across the finish line is a bit like pushing a snowball up a hill.

This bill is being ably pushed up that hill by perhaps our fittest senator, Senator Wells, ably assisted by Senator Yussuff. I discussed this contemplated amendment with both of them and with Senator Plett, who advised against it. Now, Senator Plett and I don’t agree on every topic, but on this one I have taken his advice — wisely, I think. I think Senator Plett’s message, though he didn’t put it quite like this, was that more weight on this bill and even Senator Wells might not be able to get it to the top of the hill.

We are near the finish line on this nearly 40-year effort, and I did not want to risk the potential consequences that a delay in the passage of the bill might generate. Out of respect for the champions of this initiative, here and elsewhere and well outside of Parliament, I have put my amendment in my back pocket. But I do want to signal my intention to develop a separate bill in the near future that will address this remaining unfairness. I hope it will garner your support. Thank you.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, as we embark on Autism Acceptance Month, I rise today to mark World Autism Day coming up on April 2. I want to first thank each and every one of you for your support that led to the passing of Bill S-203 earlier this week in the House of Commons.

Senator Peter Boehm and I — with a lot of inspiration from our former colleague Senator Munson — introduced this bill with the intent that it “. . . provides for the development of a federal framework designed to support autistic Canadians, their families and their caregivers.” I am so very happy for those Canadians to see this bill passed.

According to the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth, 1 in 50 — or 2% — Canadian children and youth were diagnosed as being on the spectrum, making it the most common neurodevelopmental condition in Canada. It is a lifelong diagnosis that occurs across all racial, ethnic and socio-economic groups. Despite the incredible perseverance of autistic individuals, and their families and caregivers, as well as the inspiring work of autism organizations across the country — like the Giant Steps Autism Centre and the Transforming Autism Care Consortium in my hometown of Montreal — that are working across sectors to provide supports, advance our understanding and acceptance of autism and advance inclusion, people on the autism spectrum, and those that support them, still face serious challenges right across Canada.

There are significant service gaps, and the services that are offered across the different provinces and territories are inconsistent and lead to inequities. Examples include long wait‑lists for diagnoses and services, significant out-of-pocket expenses for families, funding gaps for service providers and a serious lack of supports for autistic individuals.

The passing of this bill is a watershed moment for Canada, and especially for autistic Canadians who deserve to receive the services and support that they need in order to flourish and be actively included across all sectors of Canadian society.

The framework will provide for financial supports and accountability in the use of federal funds, research and improved data collection and more services and resources.

Autism Acceptance Month — and you’ll notice the change from using the word “awareness” to “acceptance,” and that’s very intentional, colleagues — is a time to focus on accepting, supporting and including autistic people; advocating for their rights; and recognizing their important contributions to Canadian society. We should be proud of the progress we are making in Canada, but know that there is a lot of work left to be done, and it is work that we must begin together to make Canada a more autistic-inclusive country.

With that, I want to wish everyone, especially autistic Canadians and their families, a great Autism Acceptance Month and World Autism Day. Thank you, colleagues.