Senior bureaucrat Matthew Mendelsohn has stayed in the shadows as Canada’s first chief deliveryman, but as the election approaches the spotlight will turn on his “results and delivery” unit to see how many of the Trudeau government’s promises came true.
A first stop will be the mandate letters Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent to each of his cabinet ministers. They laid out ministers’ marching orders and the governing plan for the next four years. Until Trudeau, these ritual letters to ministers were secret, not even deputy ministers were supposed to see them.
But Mendelsohn says the public release of these letters, along with the online “mandate tracker,” which monitors ministers’ progress on achieving the commitments outlined in those letters, are crucial for “transparency, driving accountability and helping to get things done. The idea of open mandate letters, based very heavily on the [election] platform, create a very clear sense of the government mandate.”
In the letters, Trudeau told his ministers he expected them to “track and report” on their commitments and “over the course of our four-year mandate I expect us to deliver on all our commitments.” Trudeau clearly wants to go to the polls in October with as many of those commitments checked off as “completed or fully met.”
The original 2015 mandate letters gave ministers 289 tasks, but that list has since swelled to 432. The government has had four cabinet shuffles with new mandate letters that reflected new priorities in the wake of an opioid crisis, a crashing federal payroll system, a flood of migrants at the border, and, of course, the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, which helped add another 143 priorities to ministers’ to-do list. With the pre-election goodies announced in Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s federal budget in March, the tracker indicated the government had fulfilled 47 per cent of original promises; dropping to a 37-per-cent completion rate for the 432 commitments.
Critics have dismissed the mandate tracker as politically self-serving and self-congratulatory, but the biggest complaint is there are too many priorities. Four or five clear, high-profile priorities are manageable “but 432 means everything is a priority,” says one official. Any failures, however, leave the Liberals wide-open to opposition attacks for breaking promises. Most Canadians will likely never read a mandate letter nor look at the tracker, but advocacy and lobby groups watched both closely in their effort to sway public policy.
Seniors’ strategy needed
A national seniors’ strategy never made it into a mandate letter but is a top priority for seniors advocacy groups. The Trudeau government implemented policies that moved the yardstick on improving the social, health and economic lives of older Canadians since elected but more remains to be done.
Some of those initiatives include: steps towards pharmacare; modifications to bankruptcy legislation aiming to help pensioners; $6 billion plowed into home care; $50 million into the study of dementia; $100 million in the New Horizons for Seniors Fund for community programs to get seniors involved and prevent social isolation. Advocates want the federal government to take the lead and adopt a national strategy to stitch together the patchwork of policies, scattered in different departments and levels of government, so tax dollars would be better spent and targeted to provide better care.
Dr. Samir Sinha, one of the architects of a proposed national seniors’ strategy, says mandate letters reveal the government’s direction and values. Those are strong signals for advocates to align parts of a national seniors’ strategy with a minister’s mandate. “I see them as a starting point and we looked through them to see what aligns with the strategy.” He notes the strategy’s research and evidence became key when then-health minister Jane Philpott was negotiating the health accord with provinces and tied $6 billion of the Canada Health Transfer to home care. He also says politicians shouldn’t be assailed for backing down on pledges in mandate letters if the evidence doesn’t support them or could end up causing harm.
The upcoming election will be the first in which the concerns of older Canadians and a national seniors’ strategy will be a campaign issue for all parties. Canada is the only country in the G-8 that doesn’t have one. There is a growing momentum across the country for a strategy to deal with our aging population, dominated by post-war baby boomers moving beyond age 65 and living longer.
Seniors advocates say a national strategy is an issue that transcends partisan politics but seniors do turn out in large numbers — up to 80 per cent — to vote.
“Federal Retirees has long advocated for a national seniors’ strategy that focuses on home care, housing, and age-friendly community life,” says Sayward Montague, director of advocacy for the National Association of Federal Retirees. “A strategy would provide a blueprint for an integrated continuum of care to meet the needs of a growing seniors population, supporting a strong economy across the country and across generations.”
What it boils down to is that care for Canada’s mushrooming seniors’ population won’t get better unless it is co-ordinated.
“Seniors, the largest growing demographic in the country, absolutely should have a dedicated voice advocating for their unique needs within cabinet…” – Jean-Guy Soulière
Seniors are the biggest users of the health-care system. Too many, especially those with chronic diseases, end up in hospitals because they don’t have the integrated care in their communities that would help them live independently. They need community-care programs, home care, nursing-home care, long-term facilities, and hospitals to work together. Informal caregivers also need recognition and support to address the financial and health challenges of caring for a loved one. But the strategy goes beyond health and must tackle poverty, financial insecurity, elder abuse, loneliness, and social inclusion.
A national strategy has the full blessing of seniors’ advocacy groups and the Canadian Medical Association. Nine organizations, including Federal Retirees, representing more than 4 million seniors have coalesced under a “Vibrant Voices” banner. The seniors’ strategy concept was backed by Liberal MP Marc Serré’s private members bill and studied by Senate and House committees. It’s now in the hands of a revitalized National Seniors Council, an external advisory committee, to report back with recommendations.
Many were disappointed by the Liberals’ inattention to seniors’ issues until the 2019 budget, which finally announced a variety of pre-election goodies aimed at older Canadians. Many of those measures, however, may not be implemented unless the Liberals are re-elected.
Laura Tamblyn Watts, the national director of law, policy, and research with the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, says the government came to power and quickly made two big changes — reversed the Conservatives’ decision to increase the eligibility age for Old Age Security to 67 from 65 and increased the Guaranteed Income Supplement — but did little else. “They did nothing for three years. Not only was there no seniors’ policy, but there was no seniors minister.”
The Liberals had four ministers responsible for children and youth but there wasn’t a minister for seniors until the summer of 2018 when Filomena Tassi was appointed. “Minister Tassi’s appointment was a victory for seniors,” Jean-Guy Soulière, president of the Federal Retirees, said at the time. “Seniors, the largest growing demographic in the country, absolutely should have a dedicated voice advocating for their unique needs within cabinet, from the beginning of a government’s mandate right through to the end, frankly.”
Phoenix and beyond As an employer, the Trudeau government has mixed reviews. It quickly took steps to live up to its election promise to restore respect to the public service after a decade of Conservative cuts and attacks. It set a conciliatory tone by unwinding Tory-era legislation that many felt gutted workers’ collective bargaining rights and negotiated dozens of new collective agreements for its 300,000 employees. But those wins with the public service were overshadowed by the lingering Phoenix payroll disaster. After three years, public servants — most of whom have been overpaid, underpaid, or not paid at all — still look at their pay every two weeks and wonder if it’s right.
Phoenix has already cost $1 billion to “stabilize” and it will be years before it is fixed. Work to find a replacement is underway but it’s unclear when it will be ready. The 2019 budget offered no money for a new system. In early May, unions and the government reached a deal over damages to compensate employees and retirees for hardships faced for not getting paid on time and properly. Retirees will get paid leave for the years they worked, which they can take in cash, plus any damage claims they have for the third tier of the deal. They are also in tense contract talks with unions that could drag into the election. Luckily, pensions have been largely unaffected due to quick strategy from the Pension Centre to prevent polluted pay data infecting pensions.
Grappling with pensions
Bill C-27, the politically charged pension legislation that federal workers feared would create a dangerous precedent in the pension landscape, seems to have died as quietly as it appeared more than two years ago. Finance Minister Bill Morneau found himself accused of conflict interest over the proposed legislation, which the opposition alleged would benefit his family business, Morneau Shepell. The bill would have allowed federally regulated employers and Crown corporations to set up target-benefit pension plans — where benefits would no longer be guaranteed and, therefore, shift risk — instead of defined-benefit plans.
The bill sparked a furor among federal unions and retirees who feared if Crown corporations converted to target-benefit plans, the government would set its sights on the pensions of Canada’s public servants, military, and RCMP.
Morneau was cleared of the conflict allegations but the bill stalled and never moved past first reading. Unions suspect the government simply let it die because of the political grief caused and heavy lobbying by labour and retirees, who still want the bill withdrawn.
“Our members have worked together to stop moves like Bill C-27 and policy that would put retirement security at risk for many Canadians, and this is the result of our collective strength,” says Soulière. “But we know that retirement security is at risk in our current environment, so we’ll be working to make sure our next government, whatever its political stripe, makes retirement security a priority for current and next generations of retirees.”
Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service, says public service pensions will continue to be a future target. Governments’ grappling with deficits, low interest rates, and an aging workforce will invariably look for ways to reduce pension costs. “We are always worried about attacks on our pensions. They are always a prime target, like when the Liberals scooped the plan’s surplus years ago,” says Daviau. “There is no reason to modernize existing pension plans, just create plans for those who don’t have them.”
Veterans still frustrated
Few Canadians feel as angry, frustrated, and disenchanted with Liberal election promises as some of the country’s 658,000 veterans. The Liberals made a raft of promises to address the anger veterans heaped on the Conservatives after a decade of cuts. They claim to have pumped more than $10 billion into veteran services and benefits since 2015. According to the mandate tracker, the Liberals say they have delivered on more than half of those promises and the rest are well underway.
A pledge for life-long pensions brought Trudeau widespread support from former service members in the last election, but some veteran advocates say the new Pension for Life plan he introduced is engendering a sense of betrayal that could cost votes this time. “The alienation of the veterans’ community in an election year does not make for good politics,” says Brian Forbes, chairman of the National Council of Veteran Associations. “This is particularly so given the perceived large swing vote of the veteran community to the Liberal party in 2015, largely based on the prime minister’s campaign promises to address the veterans’ agenda and the Equitas lawsuit.”
The anger over the Trudeau government’s plan revolves around complaints about fairness and equality that have smoldered among different generations of veterans for years. A promise to re-establish a lifelong pension as “an option” for veterans was embedded as a key task in four of the mandate letters for the revolving door of Veterans Affairs ministers who have held the post over the past four years.
The battle for lifetime pensions goes back more than a decade when lifetime pensions under the old Pension Act were switched to a series of lump-sum payments under the New Veterans Charter, conceived by Paul Martin’s Liberals and enacted in 2006 with all-party support.
For years, veterans bitterly complained the new lump-sum payment and other benefits were not as generous as the old ones. Trudeau promised to re-establish life-long pensions, which veterans widely took to mean that the pre-2006 regime was coming back. Instead, the government introduced its own version: Pension for Life.
But critics claim that plan, which came into effect April 1, will create three classes of veterans. New applicants will be entitled to less than those who applied since 2006 and considerably less than those who started receiving their pension payments before 2006. A report by the Parliamentary Budgetary Office backed up their complaint. It compared the various pension regimes veterans have enjoyed since the First World War and found pensions before 2006 were the most generous with veterans receiving, on average, 1.5 times more over their lifetime than under the Liberals’ latest plan.
This inequity was also at the core of the Equitas lawsuit, a class action launched by veterans of the Afghan war. They claimed lifetime pensions under the Pension Act paid older veterans, who served in the Second World War and Korea and other tours of duty before 2006, more generously than those who served in recent conflicts. The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the case, which has pushed the issue back into the political arena and squarely on the campaign trial.
While it is still too early to know the effects of the new Pension for Life program, there are lingering concerns about the difficulties of Veterans Affairs Canada’s application processes. Changing legislation and policy environments under multiple ministers has not helped these concerns. The trust some veterans have in the system has been shaken, which situations such as the VAC underpayment blunder do little to resolve. In late 2018, the former Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent and his office found that 270,000 disabled veterans of the CAF and RCMP, and their survivors, were underpaid between 2003 and 2010, to the tune of $165 million. The error was identified and corrected in 2011, but repayments are only set to start in 2020. “We were encouraged by the government securing the funds needed to do the right thing and pay veterans and their survivors what is owed to them,” says Montague, “but this must be prioritized, especially for low-income veterans and their survivors, as soon as possible.”
Brad White, executive director of the Royal Canadian Legion, says veterans’ issues shouldn’t be political because governments, not parties, send military personnel into conflict and “have collective responsibility” to take care of them when they return injured or not well. He also says it’s too early to pan the Liberals’ Pension for Life program because it is barely off the ground.
It’s a sentiment Soulière agrees with. “Financial well-being is incredibly important — a cornerstone for a secure, dignified, and meaningful life after service to Canada. We’re still working to understand how Pension for Life will meet veterans’ and families’ financial needs, and how this package delivers an easy-to-access, uncomplicated set of benefits to veterans.”
For some, the best solution rests with the Ministerial Policy Advisory Group, which recommended a plan that combines the best parts of the old and new ones that would be fair and equitable for all disabled veterans. But others say the debate also highlights the need for legislation to spell out the government’s obligations for the military or what soldiers call the “social covenant” or “sacred obligation” that Sir Robert Borden made when he addressed troops in the First World War.
“The alienation of the veterans’ community in an election year does not make for good politics.” – Brian Forbes
The Trudeau government can lay claim to addressing a slew of veterans’ policy complaints. They re-opened nine Veterans Affairs’ regional offices and hired more case workers and front-line staff — although there is a still a backlog of cases. It increased benefits for injured veterans so they received 90 per cent of their former military salary; and boosted disability awards for injured veterans to $360,000 to cover the “pain and suffering.”
It invested $25 million and loosened the eligibility for permanent impairment allowance — renamed the career impact allowance — so more wounded veterans qualify for higher benefit if the injuries and illness suffered in the line of duty limited their post-military career options.
Improved support for veterans, especially during transition from military to civilian life, is a longstanding concern of the Federal Retirees. The 2019 budget expanded access to support from the Canadian Armed Forces Transition Group to ensure all CAF members, not just the ill and injured, get better personalized support.
The government also doubled funding for the Last Post Fund to ensure all veterans get a decent burial and developed a suicide prevention strategy for the military and veterans. It announced a $20-million centre for excellence for chronic pain, which veterans face at twice the rate of Canadians.
The feds are still grappling with a ongoing demand to get rid of the archaic “gold-diggers” clause, which prevents surviving spouses of veterans from collecting pensions if the retiree married after age 60. The budget, however, tagged $120 million for a new Veterans Survivors Fund, which will also help survivors of public servants and RCMP.