(Ottawa) Believing that “the interests of workers must come before partisanship”, the Bloc Québécois supports the tabling of a Conservative bill aimed at protecting workers’ retirement funds in the event of company bankruptcy.
Posted yesterday at 5:56 p.m.
“All parties in the House have introduced a bill. For mine, I took all the good ideas from others […] hoping we can have the conversation,” Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu said Monday during a “cross-partisan” press briefing.
Bill C-228 provides for an annual report on the solvency of pension plans to be tabled in the House of Commons, adds a mechanism to transfer funds to make a pension plan solvent and, in the event of bankruptcy, he gives priority to retirees over major creditors and bonuses granted to bosses, summarized Mme Gladu.
Alongside her, Bloc Québécois MNA Marilène Gill said she saw that elected officials from all parties have the “will” to make changes to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act to protect workers’ pension funds.
This desire for collaboration should make it easier to go through the committee process during amendments and send them back to the House for the final vote.
“In the House of Commons, the way it works for a member to present his private bill: it’s a lottery, she explained. We are 338, we are drawn. And depending on whether chance makes us happy or not, we can debate our project or not. »
In fact, in each legislature, private members’ bills, except for government ministers, are chosen following a drawing of lots. And luck is far from having smiled on Mme Gil this time. His name was one of the last drawn, while that of Mme Gladu was among the first.
In the previous Parliament, Mr.me Gill was at committee stage and, according to the Bloc, could have passed had an election not been called.
After “20 years” of discussions on the protection of workers and retirees during a bankruptcy, the moment is “historic”, declared the Quebec director of the Syndicat des Métallos affiliated with the FTQ, Dominic Lemieux.
“Several times, unfortunately, these bills died on the order paper with elections and at times I can tell you that we almost lost hope, he said. But what is happening today really reconciles us with politics. »
It is not normal, he insisted, that during bankruptcies retirees “find themselves with crumbs […]paid after municipal and school taxes” due to the “negligence” of companies that had underfunded pension plans.
New Democratic Party finance critic Daniel Blaikie, who also tabled a similar bill in February, was conspicuously absent from the press conference.
His office did not respond to a question from The Canadian Press as to whether it would agree to send the bill to committee soon.