Bill No. 87 - Pension Benefits Act - 2nd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, we are pleased to see this amendment come in. We hope that it will have the intended effect. I wish that it had come in sooner.

I know in my office, and I suspect in many of my colleagues' offices - at the height of the pandemic, particularly in the Summer, I had many questions from people about accessing their pension funds. Frankly, it was such a complex process that very few people actually made it through to the end of that process even when they were in financial hardship because of all of the red tape involved.

We're glad to see it. I hope that financial institutions will streamline that approach and will be amenable to making those arrangements with people and that government isn't just downloading that responsibility, but actually opening up an easier way to make that happen.

I certainly hope to hear submissions to that effect at the Law Amendments Committee so that this can be a regulatory efficiency streamlining red-tape removal process that actually benefits people who need to access the money that they have earned.