To the editor:
In response to Ms. Varga’s letter of March 8, 2013 regarding the federal government’s Employment Insurance program (EI), (Watch for the Unemployed to Go On Strike When They Join Newly Formed Union, March 8 Capital News) I offer these comments, which also apply to the Canada Pension Plan Program (CPP).
First, deductions for these programs are not “contributions” to an insurance or pension program to be held in trust for taxpayers, they are “debts due to Her Majesty” (See section 86.(1) of the Employment Insurance Act and section 23.(1) of the Canada Pension Plan Act). In other words these “contributions are simply another tax owed by taxpayers.
Yes, there is an Employment Insurance Operating Account, and a Canada Pension Plan Account, but all ‘contributions’ are paid directly into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (see section 108.(2) of the CPP Act and section 72 of the EI Act) and any benefits to be paid under these Acts are charged against these two accounts. There is no money in either the Employment Insurance Operating Account or the Canada Pension Plan Account as they are not trust accounts for taxpayer contributions and benefit payments.
Even the courts agree whereby in Mintzer v. Her Majesty the Queen [1996] 2 F.C. 146, the federal court stated at paragraph 2: “This statute (and the EI Act as well) manifests no intention to create a trust either in respect of contributions or benefits.”
And because these monies are “debts due to Her Majesty,” i.e. taxes, and not monies held in trust for taxpayers, it is not your money, and they can do with it whatever they wish. That is why the government could “steal” $55 billion a few years ago and use it for some other purpose.
Grant Baudais,
Kelowna
