Last week, the federal Liberals unveiled Bill C-65, a new piece of legislation that seeks to update the Elections Act with the express aim to make it easier for Canadians to vote.
Despite the good intentions which created this proposed piece of legislation, some MPs will be able qualify for pension with this bill when they wouldn’t have qualified previously.
Elections Canada raised some concerns about the implementation of two reforms contained in the bill. For one, expanding the official voting day to three voting days would require polling centres to be open for much longer, which of course is an operational expense the group must consider.
Another reform Elections Canada drew issue with implementing was allowing voters to vote in person at any voting centre in their riding, as it would require the adoption of a new technology that would remove individuals from the voter list once they’ve cast their vote.
While the reforms won’t be implemented until 2029, the other amendments in the bill, if ed, would be rolled out in time for the planned 2025 election. Some of the other reforms Bill C-65 aims to deliver are improving mail-in voting, officially formalizing the Vote on Campus program for post-secondary students into the Canada Elections Act, making it easier to vote in long-term care facilities, enhancing transparency for third-party elections financing, and pushing the election in 2025 back one week to not overlap with Diwali.
The last reform policy has been the catalyst of controversy. Most contentious in the amendment is that this change would qualify 80 MPs for pensions, regardless of whether they win or lose their seats. These MPs would qualify for their pensions on October 21, 2025, while the original election date is set for October 20, 2025. MPs qualify for pensions after serving for six years in office.
If this moving back of election day were to take place, MPs who lose their seat wouldn’t have to worry as they’d still be locked in for their pensions.
We could be charitable in our assessment of this bill and believe moving election day back a week is solely for cultural considerations, but I believe the decision to move the election later rather than sooner has been suggested solely to appease MPs who may be losing popularity and are at risk of losing out. Out of the 80 MPs who will be locked in for their pensions regardless of election outcome, 32 are Conservative, 22 are Liberal, 6 are New Democrat, and 19 are from the Bloc.
Since July of 2023, the Conservatives have been polling on average 10 per cent, and sometimes even 15 per cent higher than the Liberals. Recent polling data shows the Conservatives currently lead the Liberals by 18 points.
I’m not saying polls are an exact science, but when the aggregate polling data over the course of a year, not weeks or months, show such a robust narrative, it feels like this amendment is transparently for the benefit of MPs.
We should really call a spade a spade.
Disregarding the political angle—consider the fact that these pensions are not free to the taxpayer.
According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the decision to move the election 1 week later, rather than earlier, could cost Canadians up to $120 million, the total pension amount for all 80 MPs. Being an MP isn’t a poor-paying job by any means—MPs already earn base salaries of $194,600, which is set to rise to $203,100 on April 1.
Back in 2023, Anita Anand, president of the Treasury Board, called for spending cuts amounting to $15.4 billion across the federal government.
With the federal budget set to be released on April 16, and our federal budgetary deficit soaring into the tens of billions, Canadians are increasingly cognizant of the importance of prudent Government spending in the year to come.
The dissonance between what a fiscally responsible government ought to be doing and what is currently being observed in Ottawa, has me worried as a young Canadian. I hope more will be done to address the concerns of like-minded Canadians, but I’m not optimistic.
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