Hon. Percy E. Downe: Honourable senators, I would like to thank the senators who have added their signatures in support of our efforts to have the U.K. government correct the appalling situation where recipients of the U.K. State Pension in Canada are receiving pensions of declining value because they are not indexed. U.K. State Pension recipients in the United States and a host of other countries — Turkey, Iceland, Philippines, this list goes on — receive indexed pensions, but not in Canada.

Given the high inflation in our country, some of these pensioners are now living in poverty and therefore must be supported by the Canadian government through the Guaranteed Income Supplement rather than pensions into which they contributed in the United Kingdom.

Colleagues, over 120,000 U.K. citizens living in Canada are collecting non-indexed British state pensions, and our Canadian economy is losing over $450 million in spending power because of the U.K. government.

As a reminder, Canada indexes the Canada Pension Plan, or CPP, regardless of where in the world the recipient lives. As the U.K. government now tries to negotiate a free trade deal with Canada, this would be a great opportunity for the United Kingdom government to show goodwill by removing this irritant between our countries and treating their citizens in a fair and compassionate manner. Thank you, colleagues.

Senator Downe: Well, colleagues, the members of Parliament have dropped the ball. Their job is not to prance around during Question Period looking for clips. Their job is to review legislation. That’s our responsibility as well. I will remind some of the newer senators here that when I first came to the Senate, we had a very similar situation of the New Veterans Charter. It went through the House of Commons in two minutes and came to the Senate, and the Senate failed to do the job. It passed in a total of five hours. Most of that time — four hours and 50-some minutes — was in the Senate. Years later, we found out from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that those changes cost veterans, who were injured in service to the country — and their families — millions of dollars in lost benefits because the Senate and the House of Commons did not do their jobs.

We’re back in a very similar circumstance. The onus is now on the Senate — the much-criticized Senate — to do the work that the House of Commons has not done. I know that colleagues on the committee and the whole institution will do that. I hear you, Senator Gold, and this is my question: Can you tell us that we’ll have the time necessary to do that work so Canadians are not short-changed by this legislation — as they were by previous rushed legislation from not only the House of Commons but the Senate?

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Senator Gold, I share the concern about the rush through the House of Commons and how the legislation will land here after no review at all there. As we all know, the Senate is often criticized, but we’re now put in a position in which what we call “the other place” — the House of Commons — simply did not do its job. They sent the legislation over here without reviewing it. Now it lands in our chamber. Given that, we may need much more time than we normally would because normally, as you know, we check the transcript and the hearings of the other place. We’re really starting from ground zero here. You would agree that we need more time than normal, I assume.