How law & order hysteria eliminated pensions for elderly inmates
By Shane Martínez
With the arrival of 2011 life became much more uncertain for senior citizens behind bars in Canada.
On June 1, 2010, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act (also known as the Eliminating Entitlements for Prisoners Act ), was introduced in the House of Commons by the Conservatives. It has since received Royal Assent and come into force as law.
The amendments made by the Act effectively prevent seniors who are incarcerated for two years or more in federal institutions from receiving their pensions while on the inside (except during the first month). The new law also provides a provision which allows the provincial governments to collaborate with the Conservatives to similarly deny pensions to persons while they are serving sentences of 90 days or longer in provincial institutions.
Bill C-31 enjoyed widespread support from Members of Parliament of all political stripes, and was passed with an expedience wholly uncharacteristic of how lawmaking typically grinds along in Ottawa. Even the zealously right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation – a major backer of the proposed amendments – seemed surprised by how easily prisoners’ pensions were rescinded.
When examined in detail, however, the formula used to pass Bill C-31 is no mystery.
In the spring of 2010 it came to the attention of the national press that serial murderer Clifford Olson was receiving pension funds through Old-Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement. Needless to say, more than a few people were upset by the news that someone serving eleven life sentences was receiving such payments.
Stephen Harper and his crew were quick to identify and respond to this public angst. Indeed, if there is one thing that can be said about the Conservatives, it is that they know how to exploit the rawest of public emotions in any situation to achieve otherwise untenable legislative change. In this instance that exploitation came through Bill C-31, which was the knee-jerk reaction designed to prevent seniors from collecting Old-Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement payments while serving time.
With images of Clifford Olson once again splashed across the news, the Conservatives easily replaced any rational, level-headed economic analysis of prisoners’ pensions with generous amounts of frantic, short-sighted anti-prisoner rhetoric. The same tactic of putting sensationalism over substance has been used since they first took power five years ago, and has facilitated the elimination of the two-for-one time served credit, cutting rehabilitative programs from penitentiaries, and introducing more mandatory minimum sentences.
By relying on retributive politics and sufficiently narrowing the debate on the issue, the Conservatives quickly drummed up support to halt pension payments to those they said were “prisoners like Clifford Olson”. Since “prisoners like Clifford Olson” had committed heinous, unspeakable offences, and would probably never be released into society again, then of course they shouldn’t be collecting pensions every month. Furthermore, “prisoners like Clifford Olson” have all of their needs tended to on the inside and therefore have no reason to amass public money.
However, what the Conservatives failed to remind Canadians of is that only one of the approximately 400 elderly prisoners affected by the amendments is Clifford Olson. In fact, very few – if any – are anything even remotely “like Clifford Olson”. They are men and women incarcerated for a wide range of offences. Some are responsible for deeds worse than others, but none deserve to carry the burden of scorn deserved by one of Canada’s most infamous prisoners. Yet hoisting that scorn onto the collective shoulders of all elderly prisoners is precisely what the Conservatives managed to do.
Largely lost in this process was any consideration for the reality that, unlike Clifford Olson, most elderly prisoners will eventually be released from prison and need to collect their pension funds while on the inside in order to support their re-entry into society. Many are now unable to work a regular full-time job and rely on the approximately $1,200 a month they get under Old-Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement to make their rent and pay off debts.
Axing prisoners’ pensions jeopardizes the most meager support system they have, and sets them up to possibly lose their homes, default on loan re-payments and generally go without a great deal of the stability they would have had following incarceration. The passage of Bill C-31 puts elderly prisoners in an even more disadvantaged position than they were in to begin with, and potentially increases the likelihood that they will be forced to engage in criminal activity after they are released.
With these considerations in mind we must reflect on whether this attack on hundreds of incarcerated seniors really has to do with Clifford Olson, or whether it has much more to do with an ongoing Conservative agenda to run roughshod over the rights of prisoners in this country.
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