New petition to House Of Commons. Please sign

What does “a payment that would not have been made” mean?

Section 65(1) of the Canada Pension Plan Act is the wall.

It says a CPP benefit shall not be assigned, charged, attached, anticipated or given as security, and any transaction that tries to do those things is void. Subsection 65(1.1) adds that a benefit is exempt from seizure and execution.

Sections 65(2) and 65(3) are the doors. Both begin with language that operates despite the wall.

Section 65(2) applies to a provincial authority or municipal authority. If that authority pays a person an advance, assistance, or welfare payment for a month (or part of a month) that would not be paid if a benefit under the CPP Act had been paid for that period, and a CPP benefit later becomes payable for the same period, the Minister may deduct from the CPP benefit and pay the authority an amount not exceeding what the authority advanced. 

Section 65(3) applies to an administrator of a disability income program who is approved by the Minister. If that administrator makes a payment under the program to a person for a month (or part of a month) that would not have been made if a CPP disability benefit under paragraph 44(1)(b) or (h) had been paid for that period, and a CPP benefit later becomes payable for the same period, the Minister may deduct from the CPP benefit and pay the administrator an amount not exceeding the payment the administrator made. The regulation requires the person’s irrevocable written consent and other conditions.

In plain language, both subsections let a public or approved private program recover, from a retroactive CPP benefit, money it paid while the person was waiting for CPP. The private or provincial program treats the amount as an overpayment or advance that would not have been made if CPP had been paying on time. The recovery is limited to what the other program actually paid, and it is done under terms and conditions prescribed by regulation.

Those doorways are what allow certain provincial programs and approved disability income programs to recover overlapping or retroactive amounts from the public contributory pension.A public contributory pension that can be used to reduce another payer’s obligation starts to function more like a subsidy for that other payer than a protected benefit for the person who paid into it. That is the distinction the petition asks Parliament to examine. 

Petition e-7751 asks Parliament to review the changes introduced by Bill C-2 (1997) to sections 65(2), 65(3) and related provisions, to examine whether current administrative agreements and practices remain faithful to the statutory purposes Parliament set, and to restore any protections that have been diminished. The full petition is here, please sign and share:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7751