Debates of June 1, 2006 (day 3)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to speak today on the exclusion of retroactive payments in income support programs and what I see as an oversight by these social assistance regulations. This issue is not the appeal process or the work done in the area by your dedicated civil servants, but rather a misstep in our policy.

Full confidence in the service being provided to the public requires diligence on the part of the government to see logical lapses corrected, and corrected immediately. With social assistance regulations, it states that retroactive income support payments are prohibited. A reasonable clause, I would say. However, what happens when errors on the part of the program administrator result in unauthorized termination of benefits to someone? What about then? This prohibition on retroactive payment applies to persons applying for income support. That makes a lot of sense to me. But what happens if someone gets bumped off the system when it’s not their fault? Where do we put the applicant in this process who is really in good standing all along, but an error has been created by the program itself, when it was the government at fault, when the government’s administration was the problem? How can retroactivity be denied when this is a necessary element of this applicant’s day-to-day life?

There needs to be a mechanism in place to protect these people of errors like this because administrative errors happen, and that’s called life. But the fact is, the government’s not doing anything and that’s wrong, Mr. Speaker. I’m interested in seeing this addressed and I look forward to the Minister providing some insight into why we’re not doing this and how we can clean up this program through this delivery mechanism to make sure that the people at most risk are those who have the biggest challenges are not being unfairly treated. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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