Letter to a Prime Minister

Once in a while, I write a letter to a leader of a nation. This letter is about a foolish law in Canada that should be amended because it can create an injustice to those to whom it relates to. The letter is addressed to Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada; dated November 10, 2008

Dear Sir:

Recently I read an article in a newspaper which deeply concerned me. It was the story of a 62-year-old blind woman (Audrey McKnight) who had been married to her deceased husband for 42 years. During their marriage, they raised three children.

In 1995, tragedy struck. Audrey began having eye problems and was soon diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that slowly destroyed her eyesight over the next few years. The pain was so excruciating that she eventually had both eyes removed.

Her disability put a huge strain on their marriage and the breaking point came when her husband (Marvin McKight) decided to go to a town reunion in Saskatchewan in the summer of 2004. It was there that he met by pure chance, an old girlfriend.

He later decided that he didn’t want to continue living with a blind woman so he left his wife and began living with his old girlfriend who incidentally is also married. She had deserted her own husband and lived with Audrey’s husband.

As fate would have it, Marvin McKight died in March 2007 of cancer. His common law wife and his actual wife both applied for CPP survivor's pension.

The pension was given to the common law wife who had only lived with the deceased 18 months before he died, despite the fact that his actual wife had lived with her husband for 42 years before he deserted her.

The common law wife got the pension because under the rules, she was the last person to have lived with him in a conjugal relationship.

Try if you will, Sir, to imagine if you can, that you are not the prime minister but instead, a disabled man who cannot work anymore but while you could work, you married a woman and supported her for the first two years of your married life before tragedy struck and you were unable to work.

Despite that, both you and your wife continued to live together in a conjugal union. After 42 years of marriage, your wife decides that she would rather live with another man so she leaves you and moves in with the other man.

Your wife is then killed in a car accident after only living with the other man for four months. Naturally you would ask for survivor’s pension. After all, she was your legal wife and you both lived together for 42 years.

How would you feel if the government told you that because your wife had been living with another man for four months before she was killed, that man would be entitled to the pension and you were not? How would you feel if on top of that, you learned that the other man was also married and had deserted his own wife?

Do you think in those scenarios, that Audrey McKnight and you would be treated fairly by the survivor’s pension plan legislation?

A worse scenario is this. A couple is aware that a woman who is is a friend of theirs is dying so they hatch a plan that the man will leave his wife temporarily and move in with the dying woman. The woman dies within a month and then the man claims the survivor’s pension and after receiving it, moves back with his wife.

These scenarios are absolutely shocking and should not happen in a country like Canada. As far as I know, nothing is being done so far to correct this anomaly in our law that permits this to happen.

In my respectful opinion, if there is to be a split in Audrey McKnight’s case, it should be based on the amount of time the conjugal unions existed with both women prior to Audrey’s husband’s death.

The eligibility rules for a survivor's pension that make it possible for the common-law partner to have precedence over the legally married spouse in the McKight case is outrageous and should be amended so that such an injustice will not occur again and the amendment should be made retroactive.

On June 27th of this year, when you received an international human rights award, in your address, you said in part;

“In my view, ladies and gentlemen, great democracies do not claim to be perfect. They do not seek to write and rewrite their histories to prove greatness at every turn. They seek to learn from their history and always to grow into a better future. That is the kind of country I want to lead….”

Most of us Canadians believe in you and that’s why we voted for your party to win the election because we want you to continue leading our country and to fulfil your promises that will make our nation even greater than it is.

However, your mandate goes further than your promises. You, as I see it, have an equally important goal and that is to see that fairness and justice is available to all of the citizens of Canada and that includes making sure that any legislation still in force, is reasonable and fair.

Please do something for this blind woman who has been denied what I really believe is hers, her survivor’s pension.

I remain,
Respectfully Yours

Dahn Batchelor

If the prime minister replies to my letter, I will put here.

UPDATES

On November 21, 2008, I received a reply from one of the prime minister's assistants saying that my letter was forwarded onto the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development.

On December 22, 2008, a letter was sent to me by the Director General of the Seniors and Pensions Policy Secretariat of the Human Resources and Social Development Ministry. I will quote the pertinent part of the two-page letter.


Dear Mr. Batchelor:

The CPP (Canada Pension Plan) provides only one pension to a spouse or common-law partner who is in a relationship with the contributor at the time of (the contributor's) death.

....it is determined that Section 15 of the Charter protects spouses, including common-law spouses from discrimination. Therefore a law that treats those in a common-law relationships less favourably than those who are legally married is arguably in violation of the Charter. unquote

I am forwarding a copy of the Ministry's letter to the leader of the opposition party in hopes that through his efforts, this anomaly in the law can be corrected so that both spouses get their fair share of the Canada pension. Again, I will keep you informed.