November 15, 2019

I have heard your point.

[Crosstalk ]

Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker. I
would hope that the points of order are exhausted and
I can proceed with the Statement.

[Inaudible interjections and laughter ]

Hon. Jeanne J. Atherden: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading]

Hon. Jeanne J. Atherden: I believe that the Honourable Premier is misleading the House. And fortunat ely, he pointed me in the direction that I needed to indicate in terms of misleading the House.
I believe that this is a Throne Speech which is
being disguised as a Ministerial Statement. If you go
down “a path f or the future, ” I believe that that is where one would put a Throne Speech. And if this
Statement is going down that path, then I believe he is misleading the House and not giving the Opposition
the opportunity to be able to not only comment on it,
but have the opportunity to give some broad direction to the people of Bermuda as to why we believe this is
not appropriate and what we would do if we had that
opportunity.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Hon. Michael J. Scott: Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker.
Point of order.

POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading]
Hon. Michael J. Scott: So, the recitations consistently from the Opposition have been that the Opposition
have not had the opportunity or will not have the opportunity to respond. This is total misleading of the
House. They have the opportunity to respond in this
sessio n or in other sessions. But this tedious refrain
that is —

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Point of order, Mr. Speaker!

Hon. Michael J. Scott: —this tedious refrain that—
that—

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: The Honourable Member
is misleading the House.
Point of ord er, Mr. Speaker.

POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: The Honourable Member
is misleading the House.
[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. Michael J. Scott: I am on my feet.
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: He has not identified what
pathway that is .
We have already spoken to you, Mr. Speaker!
But what that pathway —
[Crosstalk]

Hon. Michael J. Scott: Mr. Speaker, he cannot keep
challenging my—

Members. Just let this continue a bit
more until I can gauge where the Premier is going,
please.
Hon. E. David Burt: Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker. I shall continue.
Mr. Speaker, much has been made of the fact
that the Legislature was not prorogued and there was
no formal convening of the Legislature or a Speech from the Throne this year. In this determination, I can
advise Honourable Members and the public that I
consulted with and secured the concurrenc e of the
Governor, the President of the Senate and, of course,
you, Mr. Speaker.
It is unfortunate that a change such—

He is misleading the House.
If he had sat down and planned ahead for the
non-convening of Parliament through a Throne
Speech, then the Premier should have considered
putting a plan in place where there would have been
some sort of special session where we would have
had a democratic opportunity to hear his Throne
Speech and be able to reply!

[Inaudible interjections]

[Gavel ]

For us to have to do some
sort of reply in the form of the Order of the Day is ab-solutely unacceptable, and it is not democratic, Mr.
Speaker.

[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. Speaker. As there is no ruling, I shall proceed.
It is unfortunate that a change such as this
has been compared to an erosion of our democracy when, in fact —
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Point of order. POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: As I go through this here,
the Honourable Premier is saying that he consulted
with the press, the Governor, the President and Senate. But part of the Throne Speech is Opposition, as
well! And we are not a part of that, and we were not
consulted. A part of that process is the Opposition
itself! So, he has left out a major part of the Throne Speech!
And then to mislead the public to say he did
not want to spend the money, when we know the
money comes out of the purse of the House —not his
purse, not Cabinet! He is misleading the House and
continues to!

Thank you.

Hon. L. Craig Cannonie r: The Honourable Member
continues to mislead this House, continues to mislead
the public as to his intent. If he had any ounce of hon-ourability as to how he wanted to proceed with this . . .
I have said to him over and over, Just talk to me about it.
I understand where he is coming from with the
Throne Speech. But he had not once consulted with
us on the process that he wanted to go through. I
have no problem in joining hands with the Premier if
that is the process. But explain it to all those who are
involved, the interest groups.
And a major part of that . . . in one week, the
Premier gives his Throne Speech, and the other half
is that the next week, we reply. And now he is giving a
Statement here guised as a Statement . It is a Throne
Speech. He has alr eady told the public that his
speech was giv en during his conference, or whatever
it was. He wants people to come to him as opposed to
him serving the people, as we have just heard this
morning. The Honourable Member is misleading the
House and the people of Bermuda.
And there needs to be established a pathway ,
before we go forward, as to how the Opposition has
opportunity! That has not happened, Mr. Speaker.

[Inaudible interjections]

Getting closer.



Bermuda House of Assembly Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. Speaker, as we accord to the
rules of the House, I shall look to continue. And I am
going to ask Honourable Members on the Opposition
to listen , because I have heard this statement regar ding Throne Speeches. Throne Speeches are when the
session of the Legislature has ended and then commenced .
I shall continue, please.

Just stick to what you have got in front
of you.
Hon. E. David Burt: I will, without question.

Hon. Michael H. Dunkley: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

POINT OF ORDER

Hon. Michael H. Dunkl ey: Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Premier is trying to put lipstick on a pig. The session ended, and we were supposed to come back for
immigration. We still wait for immigration, and we
come back every two weeks to do work that is tabled
at the last minute, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, this is an affront to democracy
and your leadership in the House, and it is unacceptable.

Again, the Honourable Premier
is misleading the House. This is not a Ministerial
Statement.
On Thursday, we are about to have a byeelection in this country. This is a one- way advertorial
for the Government with no constitutional right of r eply. Mr. Speaker, you are the guardian of this Parli ament! You are the guardian of democracy on this I sland!
[Inaudible in terjections]

And you cannot allow this, respectfully, Mr. Speaker, to become a one- party state.
We are obliged to stand up and hold the Go vernment to account. The Reply to the Throne Speech
exists for th at purpose, so that the Opposition can r espond to the legislative agenda.
To allow the Premier to sit here and set out
the legislative agenda with no constitutional right of reply is wrong, Mr. Speaker. And I beg you to intervene.

I heard yo ur point.

Hon. E. David Burt: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I shall
continue.
It is unfortunate that a change as such as this
has been compared to an erosion of our democracy,
when, in fact, the opposite is the case. Recent prec edents have sought to challenge the decision to pr orogue rather than a decision to keep the Legislature in
session while continuing to conduct the people’s bus iness.
Mr. Speaker, the Speech from the Throne
sets out the objectives for the Government for a session of the Legislature. Ther e is no requirement that
the Premier prorogue the Legislature annually, just as
there is no limit on the length of time a session of the
Legislature may sit between elections.

Yes, yes. Yes, yes.
The Spe aker: Heard your point.

2606 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Hon. E. David Burt: Thank you very much.

POINT OF ORDER

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.
As the Honourable Member has read, he is
talking about the Throne Speech is not delivered until
a session has finished . We entered into this session
with the intent of one piece of legislation —
immigration! To this day it has not been done! He promised that is why we were coming back. He gave
to this House the intent to do that. And what did he do,
Mr. Speaker? He came to this House with none other
than other Bills late in the day, which should not have been presented, and has the audacity as a Premier to
stand up to one of his own Members, who is the Speaker, and say, You are wrong, Mr. Speaker. We
should be continuing on without giving you due dil igence!
This session should have been done! In fact,
this session should not even be occurring right now,
because he has misled every single person in this
House of Assembly and every single Bermudian by
not bringing immigration to the table for the only reason to come back in September! And the Minister in
charge of it cannot get it done. The Premier has not gotten it done. And we are still sitting here, waiting for
immigration, the only reason we are supposed to be
sitting in th is House!
He has broken that promise, and now he is
presenting a Throne Speech in the guise of a Stat ement. This is ridiculous! Set out a plan. We should not
go any further than now if he does not set out a plan
with you, Mr. Speaker, and the Opposition a nd the
President of the Senate, on how we proceed with democracy and allowing things to take place like they
should!
We have no problem, Mr. Speaker, if he wis hes to change certain things. But he cannot do it in a
vacuum, and he cannot do it in his own test tube as if
he is the only one who lives in Bermuda.

[Pause]
Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. Speaker, I am going to attempt to continue my Statement. But, Mr. Speaker, I respectfully ask that if there is a point of order, that the
Members are asking if a rul ing could be made.

Just speak to what is in front of you.

Hon. E. David Burt: Thank you very much. I will try
again, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the Speech from the Throne
sets out t he objectives for the Government for a session of the Legislature. There is no requirement that
the Premier prorogue the Legislature annually, just as
there is no limit on the length of time a session of the
Legislature may last between elections. The fact is
that the 2018 Throne Speech, by any objective measure, was one of the most ambitious in recent memory,
with 56 separate pledges, many of which were trans-formative in their nature. Not all of the items could be,
realistically, completed within a 10- mont h session, so
it made sense for the Government to skip the cer emony while we continued working.

The Honourable Premier conti nues to give a. . . continues to m islead the House in an
effort to give a Ministerial Statement which is not a
Ministerial Statement, but a Throne Speech in di sguise.
Mr. Speaker, on the 11
th of November, we
gathered to mark the passing of those who fought in
the war to protect democracy, to fight for democracy,
to ensure that the democratic process was upheld and
cherished. This is not the democratic process, Mr.
Speaker! We are being denied a right of reply. The
Opposition is being prevented from doing its dem ocratic job for which we wer e elected, namely, to hold
the Government to account. If he is going to set out
his Legislative agenda, he must —and the Speaker
and the Parliament must —give us a democratic right
of reply, as we are entitled.

[Inaudible interjections]

Take your point.

POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading]
Hon. Michael H. Dunkley: The Honourable Member,
the Premier, is misleading this House, Mr. Speaker.
So this, in actual fact, is a Throne Speech because he has admitted in what he just read that the
2018 Throne Speech has not been completed yet. So,
they failed and they need to double back to make sure
they complete it.
This is a failure, and admitting that they ca nnot do a Throne Speech because they have not completed what they said they would do, and they did not want to come to this House and debate it because
they know that the Opposition would hold their feet to
the fire.

Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. Speaker, I will attempt to
continue.
[Crosstalk ]

The Spe aker: Members.

[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Get something done. Get
something done.

Mr. Speaker. Point of order, Mr.
Speaker.

POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading] Mr. Ben Smith: The Honourable Premier is mi sleading the House. It seems that if we are not having a
Throne Speech, we are at least having a speech
about a Throne Speech. So, either way, you are still
trying to get a Throne Speech in by either having it or talking about a Throne Speech. That seems t o be the
situation that we are looking at right now without any
way for the Opposition to actually have a democratic
way for us to reply —how it would have been done
normally when we have a Throne Speech.
That is the piece that needs to be addressed.
If we continue to allow the Honourable Premier to
move forward in the way that he is, democracy is being flogged.

Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. Speaker, may I respectfully
ask for a ruling on the Statement?

Premier, continue on.

Hon. E. David Burt: Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, most of our traditions are inherited from the Westminster system as administered in London.

Hon. Michael H. Dunkley: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading]
Hon. Michael H. Dunkley: That statement is misleading the House, Mr. Speaker. He knows clearly that most of our traditions are not inherited from the
Westminster system. He is generalising, and he is
trying to divide the country.
Let us have a real Throne Speech and a good
debate, Mr. Speaker!

Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. [Speaker], most of our traditions are inherited —
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: It is a system, not a tradition!
[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: There is a complete difference between the two.
[Inaudible in terjections]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Yes, everybody keep quiet.
Everybody keep calm. Keep quiet.

One person is on their feet. One person is on their feet!
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: We are here for immigr ation. We are not doing it! Still not doing it!
[Gavel]
Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: Still not doing immigration!
How can you make a promise on immigration? How
can you make a promise and it has not been done?

[Crosstalk]

Hon. L. Craig Cannonier: It is not going to g et done!

[Gavel]

Escort him out.

[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. L. Craig Cannon ier: Nice plan. Yes, yes, yes.
While you sit back there and do nothing, and get paid.
How many others would get that? He has not an-swered questions that have been given since July
about who is getting paid! Still has not answered
them!
They are talking about democracy?
Answer the questions! You don’t want to. And
you know why, Premier!

[Gavel]

[The Honourable L. Craig Cannonier, Opposition
Leader, was escorted from the Chamber.]

Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. Speaker, I will attempt to
continue.
Mr. Speak er, most of our traditions are inherited from the Westminster system —

The Honourable Premier conti nues to mislead the House by continuing to give a Mi nisteria l Statement that is not, and is in fact a Throne
Speech.


Bermuda House of Assembly I would invite the Honourable Members on the
other side of this House to consider how they would
have reacted had the OBA Government done this to
them —denied a right of reply, denied a right of repl y,
Mr. Speaker! This is trampling on democracy.
And Mr. Speaker, you as the Speaker of this
House are the guardian of democracy.

The Premier continues to mi slead the House. The Government of Bermuda is
elected to represent all Bermudians. And this is not
representation of all B ermudians. The Opposition has
a constitutional obligation to hold the Government to
account. We are being denied a right of reply, and this is contrary to the democratic process. And, Mr.
Speaker, you must bring this to an end, respectfully.

Thank you.

Hon. E. David Burt: Mr. Speaker, most of our traditions are inherited from the Westminster system as administered in London. Honourable Members should
be interested to know that the historic purpose of pr orogation was to allow MPs to return to their constit uencies in days before modern transport or technology. As the need for such long breaks has diminished, so
has the length of sessions increased. This change is
not unique to politics. Many universities have long determined that summer breaks designed to allow st udents to return home and work the fields or other such labour are equally archaic, and, as such, universities now promote degree courses that can be completed
in half the usual time, recognising that the world has
changed.
In all likel ihood, Mr. Speaker, this House and
the other place will sit over longer periods in the f uture. Honourable Members and the public should co nsider these the new normal. The need for prorogation and a concurrent break from the rigours of debate can
be better managed without so strictly being bound to
centuries -old tradition.

Hon. Jeanne J. Atherden: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Members!

Hon. Jeanne J. Atherd en: Mr. Speaker, I will clarify
why I am saying that. He asked—

[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. Jeanne J. Atherden: There are many items,
especially the ones that he has referred to. He indicated that he was going to talk about the future. He is
making st atements about tradition, making statements
about democracy, making statements about the just ification for why he has not issued a Throne Speech.
2610 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly And I believe he is misleading the House and
the people of Bermuda by disguising this statement as
a Minister ial Statement when it is a justification for not
having a Throne Speech.

Thank you.

Hon. E. David Burt: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In all likelihood, this House and the other
place will sit over longer periods in the future. Honourable Members and the public should consider
these the new normal. The need for prorogation and a
concurrent break from the rigours of debate can be
better managed without so strictly being bound to ce nturies -old tradition. However, Mr. Speaker, I can advise Honourable Members that the Legislature will be
prorogued in good time for the 400th Anniversary of
Bermuda’s Legislature to be observed, with full cer emony, in November 2020.
Mr. Speaker, our system of Government has
at the root of its accountability model the manifesto, or
platform. This document is put to the people and, on
the strength of that platform and other elements of an
election season, the electorate determine who should
form the Government. That document is augmented
throughout a Government’s tenure by Speeches from
the Throne, Budget Statements in support of the E stimates of Revenue and Expenditure and Statements by Ministers that speak to Government policy. All of
these form a matrix by which performance can be
measured and through which can be seen th e plans
for the period they cover.
I make this contextual reference as part of this
Statement, Mr. Speaker, to address the criticism often
levelled about the lack of a plan. Some may not like
the plan the Government has, but to say we have no
plan is simp ly false.
Mr. Speaker, based on those documents and
undertakings made since the tremendous mandate of
trust from the people of Bermuda in July 2017, I can
advise Honourable Members and the public that, out
of the 161 individual pledges made in the platfor m,
40 per cent have been fully completed and 38 per
cent are in progress. Yes, Mr. Speaker, the Gover nment has achieved much.
We have invested in people, significantly i ncreased investment in Bermudians, with a $15 million
cumulative increase in education spending, coupled
with our College Promise initiative that has seen hundreds of Bermudians gain valuable access to tertiary
studies at the Bermuda College.
The Attorney General’s Chambers has been
made a centre of choice for Bermudian lawyers to
complete their pupillage, and in some compelling st ories of grit and determination, men and women have
secured their professional designations through a
programme championed by this Government. We have increased our investment in training
and development of Bermudians through increased
scholarships and more investment in apprenticeships.
And we have provided coding classes in public schools, coding bootcamps for adults, and FinTech training for hundreds of Bermudians.
We have encouraged small business development. The BEDC [Bermuda Economic Develop-ment Corporation] micro- loan programme has created
new access to capital for small business.
There are new payroll tax exemptions for
companies with a payroll of under $1 million per year.
The summer entrepreneurship —

Members, I am on my f eet to make a
ruling.
Mr. Premier, based on the exchange that we
had last night , or last evening, in regard to items I
asked to be removed from the Statement , which are
still contained in that Statement, I am ruling that we
will not proceed with that Stat ement any further.
We will move on to the rest of the Orders of
the Day.

Hon. E. David Burt: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

We will allow congrats then.
Would any Member like to speak to congrats
and condolences?
Premier, you have the floor.
2612 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Hon. E. David Burt: Good morning, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, this morning I rise to extend
condolences and sympathies to the family and friends
of my constituent, or former constituent, Ms. Hazel
Marlene Holder, mother to Clyde Holder and sister to Barbara Richard, Jean Moffet -Holder, Sybil Trott,
Henry and Wayne, in her 84
th year of number 7 Pembroke Park Lane.
Mr. Speaker, I would also like to extend my
condolences to the family and friends of another one of my constituents, and I would ask to associate the entire House with this, for the passing of Mr. Charles
“Scratchie” Lawr ence of 13 Princess Estate, Pembroke.

Ah!
[Desk thumping]

Hon. E. David Burt: I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that
there are many persons inside of this House who will
recognise “Scratchie,” as he was called, whether it
was persons who were fans of the Devonshire Cougars or persons, such as myself at a young age, who
went to get their haircut at Scratchie’s barbershop.
And Scratchie cut my hair for quite some time. I send
heartfelt thoughts and prayers to all of his family, friends, and clubs and organisations.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask that
condolences be sent to the family of Orbis founder,
Allan Gray, who passed away over the weekend. I
would ask that Honourable Members be associated
with that remark, that message, Mr. Speaker. I pray that his wife [Gill], his children Trevor, Jenny and Will,
and all of his family find peace as they mourn the loss
of such a wonderful and kind man. Honourable Members will know that, without question, Orbis is a major
employer in Bermuda and a firm that has been a
friend of Bermuda and Bermuda’s charities over the years, Mr. Speaker.
The final thing of which I will say, and Minister
of Sport, I hope that you will not get too upset, is that I want to send congratulations to our para- athlete Jessica Lewis, who just missed a medal last week in the
100-metre final of the World Para Athletics, even
though she scored a personal best in Dubai.
And finally, Mr. Speaker, I am just going to
state that last week I got to visit one of our surviving
war v eterans. And I know that today is his birthday.
And it is a very rare occasion that I take time in the
House to ask for us to celebrate someone’s birthday.
But I wanted to wish a very happy 96
th birthday to Mr.
Randolph Hayward, one of the surviving men wh o
served in the First Battalion Caribbean Regiment deployed 75 years ago.

[Desk thumping]
Hon. E. David Burt: I wish him the happiest of birt hdays. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
I recognise the H onourable Deputy Premier.
You have the floor.

Hon. Walter H. Roban: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It would [be remiss of] me to not stand to not
be associated particularly with the congratulatory
message given to Mr. Randolph Hayward, Esquire,
who is a const ituent of mine, who is someone [from]
whom I have taken great comfort in my visits to him.
He is a man of great wisdom and, certainly, is one of
the best that Bermuda has produced for his service in
the war, for his support for issues concerning the workin g men and women of this country. He is a d evout follower of the AME ministry and is a longstanding member of the AME Church of St. Paul. He is one
of the best that Bermuda has produced. And it is fortunate that, certainly, I have had the privilege to have
him as a constituent. But I am sure many Bermudians
benefit from his counsel, as a man who has been
through a lot, seen a lot and understands a great deal.
So, happy to be a part of congratulatory remarks to
him on his 96
th birthday.
Thank you.

The Speake r: Thank you.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
We recognise the Honourable Member Co mmissiong. Honourable Member, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I ask the House to send condolences to the family of M r. Sergio Dillworth. Sergio
Dillworth was a man who was in his mid- to late- 40s,
probably about 46 –47. He was a contractor of the old
school, despite his youth, a renowned mason, a man
of all trades and master of many of them. And he was
from that Dillwort h/Brown/Fox clan. And he is going to
be sadly missed. It is one thing, you know, every fam ily, of course, takes the loss of a family member hard,
as his mother is doing. But to have that loss occur
thousands of miles away from home in Mexico, while
on a cr uise, is somewhat tragic. And he was a good
friend of mine. He was a loyal Progressive Labour
Party person, a key member of my constituency and
my canvassing team. And he will surely be missed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Commiss iong.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
We recognise the Honourable Member Scott,
from constituency 36. Honourable Member, you have
the floor.
Hon. Michael J. Scott: Mr. Speaker, thank you.


Bermuda House of Assembly The felicitations and good wishes to the 96year-old Mr. Randolph Hayward I must rise to be associated with, even though it involves some repetition.
So, I too wish to be associated with both the MP for
Mr. Hayward, the Deputy Premier and the Premier himself making remarks of congratulations. I hope he
is listenin g. I often visit with Mr. Hayward. He is a former client of Dame Lois, and so I carried on professional services to him. But there were just personal times with him.
I do not know if the Deputy Premier recogni ses his [having] a deft hand in the garden. Of ten, as I
am visiting his house, [I notice] that. And he lives in a
very neat part of the geography of Bermuda, a place
called Secret Lane. I mean, it is a beautiful lane in Devonshire. And up that lane, Mr. Hayward tends a
garden. It is, I am sure, what h elps to keep his days
busy and filled. But I concur and adopt the observ ations of the public service that Randolph Hayward has
given to both his faith community, St. Paul Church,
and the civil service of this country, working within Customs. So, congratulations, Mr. Randolph Ha yward.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to
send condolences to the family of [Rui] Paul Fortuna,
of Smith’s. He was a constituent of mine. And he was renowned in the Portuguese community. He was a
family man. And when we went to his house, many
times we talked about politics, we talked about Be rmuda, we spoke about the history of the contributions
made by the Portuguese community. And I will be sad
because of his passing.
I would like to also associate myself with [the
condolences in regard [to] Scratchie Lawrence’s departure and Don Mason.
Don Mason was an artisan. He had a stall at
the Craft Market in Dockyard. And he was always
cheerful, fun to deal with, and also entertained and
was hospitable to our tourists. So, I would like to send condolences to his family.
Mr. Speaker, as to Allan Gray, he came here
in the 1970s or 1980s. And we as a country are priv ileged to have a man of his stature, Mr. Speaker, here.
I was in South Africa recently. And in the asset management space, he is renowned. You see his name and companies posted all over the place in Cape
Town. This man was an icon of the industry. We need
more people like that gentleman in Bermuda for us to
get back on our economic feet. He brought credibility to Bermuda. He brought credibility to the fund service
industry. And he was well respected and a humble
man, Mr. Speaker. I know when his fund started I was a relationship manager, and we worked together on
the shareholder registration side in bringing his funds
to fruition. It was a learning curve for me, it was a
learning curve for the bank and it was a learning curve
for Bermuda. Again, a man of great stature has passed and will be a loss to not only Bermuda, but the
people of South Africa, as well.
Thank you.

Thank you, Member.
Does any other Member?
We recognise the Honourable Member Moniz.
Honourable Member Moniz, you have the floor.

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to be associated with the condolences to the family of Paul Fortuna and to the family
of Allan Gray.
My main purpose today is to note for the record the successful visit to Bermuda of the delegation
from the Azores, including His Excellency, the Pres ident Vasco Cordeiro. It was a wonderful weekend. I
would like to congratulate those organisations that
had public events, inc luding the House of the Azores,
as well as Vasco da Gama. I was lucky enough to be
asked to host the tour of the National Museum for the
president and his delegation so they could visit, in par-ticular, the Azores Room at the museum. And, of course, this vi sit was a follow -up to the visit that was
paid in 2016 by the Honourable Member Michael
Dunkley, the then- Premier, and myself, to the Azores,
which was very successful. And I think we have esta blished a very firm friendship there, which we should
build upo n.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
I recognise the Honourable Minister, former
Whip. Minister Foggo, you have the floor.
Hon. Lovitta F. Foggo: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I just wish to make some congratulatory r emarks. I would like to congratulate Devonshire Cougars for winning the Dudley Eve competition just —

[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. Lovitta F. Foggo: Yes. Yes.

Point of order, Mr. Speaker.
[Laughter]
The Speake r: Mr. Weeks, Member Weeks, I knew
you were not going to let her get too far with that one.
[Laughter]

2614 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Hon. Lovitta F. Foggo: Because I almost said Devonshire Rec. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker; thank you.
Thank you, Member.
For winning the Dudley Eve competi tion. (I did
say that wrong.)
And, Mr. Speaker, I also would like to congratulate, in advance, our football team as they go out
there and work their magic when they arrive in Mex ico. We are hoping to have the same result we did
when we visited Panama on t heir homeland. And we
are hoping for the same. I know it is a far reach. But
nonetheless, they are going with well wishes from
Bermuda. And as long as they acquit themselves extremely well, they will do us proud.
And, Mr. Speaker, also congratulations to all
of those who received awards at the cricket present ation on Saturday last. Many cricketers were highligh ted for their performances during the cricket season
here in Bermuda. And so, congratulations to them, as
well. And I think I am going to just leave everything on
a happy note, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
By way of co ngratulations first, I would just
like to congratulate the PGA event that occurred, and I would like to extend thanks both to the Minister and to
the BTA for the success of that event. It is always a
wonderful time when Bermuda can showcase what we have to the world through world television.
That same week, we also had the pleasure of
over 400 people here from the World Sailing [Conference]. I was able to meet with the Vice President of
the World Sailing Federation. And I asked him why it
was that they ch ose Bermuda to bring over 400 pe ople here in November, which is an off season for us, October –November. And he said it was because of
the America’s Cup. And I am so pleased that that is
being recognised. And I hope that the Minister will
continue to build on both of those foundations to i mprove our Island.
As to obituaries, I would add my voice to
those who have already spoken about the passing of Allan Gray, who was the founder of the hedge fund
Orbis, or the fund Orbis. One of the examples that I
often l ike to give, and indeed I have given before in
this House, is how our Bermuda economy might look if we had two or three more Orbis’s here. We were incredibly fortunate that Allan Gray chose to settle on
our small Island. I had the pleasure to know him personally and know him quite well. He was a man of
intelligence, charm and an amusing, quiet dignity. He
did not count his gold; rather, he created a very large
foundation and systematically gave it all away, both in South Africa and around the globe, includi ng in Bermuda.
He deeply loved Bermuda. And if I may r emark, it is a shame that a global legend, who gave so
much to our Island for so long, was never considered a Bermudian. We are grateful for all that he has given
to our Island, and I offer my heartfel t condolences to
him, to his three children, to his grandchildren and
great -grandchildren.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
Does any other Member?
I recognise the Honourable Minister De Silva.
Honourable Minister, you h ave the floor.
Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I would also like to be associated with the condolences to the Gray family. I had the honour of meeting and speaking to Allan Gray, and of
course, his son William Gray, many ti mes. And I send
out condolences to William, Trevor and Jenny, as
well.
Mr. Speaker, whilst I am on my feet, I would
also like the House to acknowledge and give condo-lences to [the family of] Reverend Dr. Charles Swan,
who passed away recently. I associate Michael
Weeks. I associate the rest of the House, as well. Of course, Reverend Swan lived in Toronto and was the
brother of a good friend of ours, Valerie Dill. So, I certainly wish condolences be sent to the family.
And whilst I am on my feet, Mr. Speak er, I
would like the House to send congratulations to Samiaya Ming, who was recently entered on the Dean’s
List at St. Mary’s University. And Samiaya Ming . . . I
guess the Minister of Education is looking at me, because he probably realises that she is the daughter of
one . . .

[Inaudible interjections]

Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Excuse me, Ms. Foggo.
She is the daughter of one MP in this House,
Ms. Renee Ming. And of course, of course, the Sergeant -at-Arms, Mr. Raoul Ming.

[Desk thumping]
Hon. Zane J. S. De Silva: Mr. Speaker, this young
lady I just happen to know a little bit and watched her
grow over the years. And to witness her be added to
the Dean’s List at St. Mary’s is such an awesome feat.
And I know she will do well, and she will represent
Bermuda well in the future. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister.
Does any other Member?
We recognise the Honourable Member Tyrrell.
Honourable Member, you have the floor.


Bermuda House of Assembly Mr. Neville S. Tyrrell: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I do not know how I managed to
miss this some weeks ago, to ask the House to send
condolences to a very dear friend and constituent of
mine, Mr. [Clyde] Malcolm Nisbett. Malcolm basically left to mourn his wife Shirlene, daughters Mar chelle ,
Shanika and S amantha .
Malcolm and Shirlene shared a rich spiritual
life over 25 years of marriage. And I had the opportunity to ask her, you know, what would she miss most
in the loss of Malcolm? And she said, Tyrrell, we had
daily talks, all day, every day. I do not know how he
managed because he was a taxi driver and she was
also a working woman, as well. But I could tell that he
will certainly be missed, and he will be missed by many of his friends.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I would like a special recognition
given to a young man whose vision has materialised
very significantly for Bermuda. I single out Mr. Patrick Horgan III, because this year his mother passed
away. His mother honeymooned in Bermuda in the
1950s, Mr. Speaker. This young man has a love for
Bermuda. We share a passion of golf. And as a consequence of his friendship with Minister Zane De Si lva, he was able to fulfil a dream of bringing a PGA
Tour event to Bermuda.
I discovered the passing of his mom, who
honeymooned at Elbow Beach, only recently to find
out where that driving passion for the Bermuda
Championship came about. It started from love— love
through a honeymoon in this country. And he, I told him, was made in Bermuda because out of that love
came many children who visited this country on many
occasions. That Bermuda Champions hip has gone a
long way and will do much for this Island because its
foundation is grounded in the greatest gift God offered
to us all. And that is love.
So, congratulations to the Ministers Burch and
De Silva, and to the Bermuda Tourism Authority, Mr.
Dallas, and to all of those who made it possible —Mr.
Greg Maybury and his Chairman, Mr. Neville Tyrrell.
I would also like to recognise the work of Dr.
Jeffrey Sammons, from New York University, who has
unearthed the great contributions in Bermuda, Can ada and the United States, particularly, of a gentleman
named Louis Rafael Corbin, from St. George’s, whose
life in golf was not long enough. He died at age 44 in
1951. But because of this professor from New York University, we are learning [about] the great li fe of Mr.
Corbin, the interesting life of Mr. Corbin. And I just want to thank Dr. Jeffrey Sammons,
and the Minister of Community and Culture and her team, Dr. [Kim] Dismont Robinson and Ms . Haye and
others, who have been a part of making sure that the history of Bermuda, particularly, is being properly recorded. Persons like Louis Corbin, Earl Anderson,
Herman “Tucci” Bascome, Leonard Jones were young
men when the Caucasian- only rule prevailed in golf
from 1935 to 1961. But Corbin defied that, defied it
and paid a great price for it. But he did a great job to
make sure that integration finally came, notwithstanding the lingering that goes on afterward. Thank you,

Associate the whole House, yes.

Hon. Jeanne J. Atherden: I must admit, growing up,
she was one of those individuals whom you would
hear about, and you saw the great things that she did.
And I always used to feel very proud as a Bermudian
that she was able to perform on the stage overseas,
and also when she came back to Bermuda. I was very pleased to see that she continued to make contributions in terms of training students and making sure
that people benefited from her knowledge and exper ience.
Mr. Sp eaker, I would also like to have congratulations sent to the organisers of the World Rugby Classic, which was held last week. It was actually the 32
nd year. And I do not know how many people r emember the World Rugby Classic when it was down
at what we used to call National Sports Field, which is
at Somersfield. And who would have thought that it
would grow from something very small that everybody
enjoyed to something which has become very large?
And also, I would like to say that I think that people recogni se that there are lots of different sports that
happen on the Island. And people come to the Island,
and it creates what I call the opportunity to grow our
tourism product and to make sure that people get ex-posed. Because we recognise that once somebody
comes to Bermuda, they always want to come back.
We do not have lots of things, but the friendliness of
the people and the enjoyment they have here . . . and
I think 32 years is something that is very, very special.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Good morning, Mr. Speaker and
listening audience.
I would like to start my comments by sending
condolences to the family of Sergio Dillworth. I recog-nise that it has already been done. But he was my
colleague from the Berkeley. And he was my year. So,
I would like for his family to know that our thoughts
and prayers are with them, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I am moving on to a happier
comment. I would also like at this time to extend congratulations to the Richard Allen AME Church Royalty
Committee. They hosted a high tea on November the 11
th for women. And there were hats and gloves and
all sor ts of entertainment involved. And it was an excellent event. We honoured two ladies from the St.
George’s Community, Aunt Mary Basden and Kathleen Blakeney. They are ladies who have done lots of
work in the St. George’s community, and they conti nue to insp ire the young women who are coming.
And, Mr. Speaker, I think you may enjoy this
congratulatory [comment]. I had the opportunity to
participate in the community walk last week at West
End Primary School. They celebrated 150 years. It
was a bit of a rainy day. I guess that is what happens
up in Somerset, because it was not raining down in St.
George’s. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. The hosts were
very good.

And I thank them for the invitation.
And also, I would like to congratulate East
End Primary because they had an event this week,
which was called Father Figures Are Needed. And
over 100 parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties, and
guardians attended and showed the students at the school why males are needed and the importance of
the role of a male. So, I th ink events like that are i m-portant, Mr. Speaker. And I encourage them, if it is
possible, to make that an annual event.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I would firstly like to give
birthday greetings to a strong Devonshire woman,
WPC 456 Barbara Joan Westin Clark, who went 80
this year, originally from Brighton Hill.
Condolences to the family of Anita Lindo, of
Devonshire, as well. She died at age 99.
And I would like to associate with the remarks
for Back o’ Town legend, King [ Earlston ] “Scratchie”
Lawrence. Within that shop . . . it is not a big shop. I
do not know if you have ever been there. But within
that shop, there were conversations, debates, avid
arguments, points of order that helped to shape modern Bermuda. Not only did he shape people’s heads,
but he helped to shape Bermuda. And today there is
going to be a block party at 6:30. So, I hope the m otion to adjourn is over.

Well, it starts at 6:30, Back
o’ Town time.
Also, I would like to associate with the comments for Mr. Sergio Dillworth. Sergio was slightly b eyond me at the Berkeley. And he and I played rugby
for the Berkeley’s team. Sergio, as MP Commissiong
said, was a foot soldier for [constituency] 21. He made sure everyone was visited. He made sure everyone’s
information was updated. And he also grew peppers.
And most importantly, he was a proud father, Mr.
Speaker. It is not often that . . . black men in general
get a bad rep that we do not look out for our children.
MP Commissiong and I went to his house one day, and he emphatically was so proud of his daughter,
who had a forensic science degree and just wanted a chance to get employed. And if there is any memory


Bermuda House of Assembly that we should leave of Sergio, it is that he was a
proud father who provided for his daughter and ensured that she got employed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Good morning to the House and
to the listening audience.
I just rise to give some congratulations to a
few members of the public. First off, to Ms. Tanaya Tucker who, on November 1st, was called to the bar in
Bermuda to serve as a lawyer. Personally, I know her.
She is also a constituent of mine. But when you read
and listen to her story of the adversities that she had
to overcome along her road to accomplish that, it is a
story that is well worth listening to and a story f or others who are coming up to read and see that you can
pursue— no matter what challenges come your way —
your dreams and accomplish them.
Also, Mr. Speaker, I would also like to recognise—and this is actually a first —my chairman, Dr.
Dickinson, his son, wh o is in primary school. For the
first time in the history of the Bermuda Fire Service, they had the essay and the picture competition. For
the first time in history, he won both of those different
categories. He won the essay and the picture competition. S o, I would like to send congratulations to him
for doing that —Tyler Dickinson. And I believe he attends Purvis Primary. (I will be happy to be corrected.)
And also, Mr. Speaker, I would also like to—
this may have already been mentioned, the 150
th annivers ary for West End Primary —send congratulations
to them. As a resident of Somerset, I unfortunately did not have the privilege of attending West End. But I do
know a lot of great people who did attend there. I
would like to send congratulations to the school and to
those who attended through those 150 years, and that the school may carry on, also, and produce more st udents who will come out of there.
So, again, thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
I recognise the Honourable Member Dunkley.
You have the floor.
Hon. Michael H. Dunkley: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I too would like to add my congratulations and thanks for the arrangements and the
visit by the Honourable President of the Azores, Vas-co Cordeiro, to the Island recently. It certainly came at
a good time, with the holiday being held over the
same period. And I think it will go a long way to
strengthening our relationships. And I would hope, at
the same time, there will be some objectives moving forward, such as trying to figure out some air service
and working on the driver’s licence issue that have
been problems for Bermudians when they travel to the
Azores.
I would like to be associated with the condolences sent to the G ray family. I had the privilege of
knowing Mr. Gray and his family for many, many
years. And like my colleagues have said before me,
he was a very humble man, a man who was dedicated
not only to the industry that he was involved with, but
also to the community. And he gave back to the co mmunity. And I was blessed to have the opportunity to spend some time with him and get to know his compassion that he had for people. And that is a lesson
for many in our community in remembrance of Mr.
Gray. He was a fine gentleman. So, condolences to his wife and the children whom he leaves behind.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity [to ask] if the House can send condolences to
Mr. Collingwood Walker on the passing of his wife,
Agatha, a couple of days ago. Mr. Walker and his wife
were big supporters of mine, and I always enjoyed my
visits there because one thing about Mrs. Walker is
she would tell you like it is. And if you did not listen,
she would tell you over and over and over again. And
so, condolences to him and his family on the passing
of his beautiful wife. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Good morning and thank you,
Mr. Speaker.
I would like to send condolences to the family
of Cynthia Johnson, another constituent of mine in
Harlem Heights. Sending condolences to the family of
Cynthia Johnson and her daughter, Tracey.
I also just want to give congratulations to the
K. Margaret Carter Centre, who opened their doors to
the public about a week ago so that the public could
come and visit and see what it is that they do and
share with our community. And so, we want to give a
congrats to t hem for opening their doors and sharing
so that the public can come and see all the good
works that are performed there at the K. Margaret
Carter Centre. Thank you, Mr. Speaker . . . oh, I do
want to . . . I do not know if he is still in the House, Mr.
Enrique Brown. I want to just send congratulations to
him this morning for sharing a word this morning to us
at the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast. I just wanted to
2618 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly give him thanks and recognise him this morning.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

But before that, let me just also note
that the former Speaker Horton was in the Gallery this
morning with the speaker from the prayer breakfast. And I would just like to acknowledge that both had
been present this morning. And also, the President of
the Senate is with us thi s morning. I trust that she has
found this morning’s session interesting, and we we lcome her presence.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

And the last is in the name of the Minister of Health. Minister. FIRST READING

CHILDREN (NO. 2) AMENDMENT ACT 2019

Hon. Kim N. Wilson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I am introducing the following
Bill for its first reading so that it may be placed on the Order Paper for the next day of meeting, namely,
Children (No. 2) Amendment Act 2019.

We have one this morning to be tabled.
And it is in the name of the Minister of Education.
Minister.

BERMUDA COLLEGE ANNUAL REPORT FOR
2018/19 —MOTION TO TAKE NOTE

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to attach . . .
Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I propose to
move the following motion at the next day of meeting:
That this Honourable House take note of the Annual Report of the Bermuda College for 2018/19.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That now brings us to the Orders of the
Day. And I believe that the [Order] No. 2, the National
Pension S cheme (Occupational Pensions) Amendment Act 2019, is the first item of the day, in the name
of the Minister of Finance.
Minister.

BILL

SECOND READING

NATIONAL PENSION SCHEME (OCCUPATIONAL
PENSIONS) AMENDMENT ACT 2019

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Thank y ou, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members will be
aware that the National Pension Scheme (Occupa-tional Pensions) Act 1998 provides for the establis hment, administration and regulation of private sector
occupational pension plans for Bermudians and their husbands or wives. The Act became operational from
the 1
st of January 2000, and regulations were intr oduced in 1999 and 2000 to provide for such matters
as registration of plans, plans for self -employed persons and pension fund investments.


Bermuda House of Assembly Another significant amendment was made in
2006 to make it possible for the commission to recover outstanding employer contributions as a civil matter
through the courts, as well as to make directors and
officers of companies personally liable for any unpaid contri butions.
Further amendments to the Act and associated regulations were introduced in 2010 and 2011 to allow plan members with a real financial need to get
access to a portion of their pension funds based on
prescribed criteria for hardship. Specifically, financial hardship withdrawals were permitted for applicable
mortgage arrears, eligible education expenses, uncovered medical expenses and rental arrears.
Mr. Speaker, the Pension Commission has
provided the following background statistics as at 31
Decem ber 2018: There are 25,386 estimated plan
members. There are 3,065 plans; 3,050 of those were defined contribution; and 15 were defined benefit.
[There are] approximately $2.98 billion of assets in
plans, 568 self -employed plans, six approved thirdparty plan administrators, $785 million of assets in
local prescribed retirement products, and $28.79 mi llion in total financial hardship payments since inception in 2010.
Mr. Speaker, the Pension Commission, which
is the specialist regulatory body established t o admi nister the Act, undertook a review of the Act to determine if all of the existing provisions adequately co vered developments that have taken place since the
legislation was first introduced in 2000. To this end,
the commission’s standing advisory com mittee was
engaged in reviewing various proposals. The commi ttee consisted of the following representatives: the A rgus Group, BF&M Life Insurance Company Ltd., C olonial Pension Services Ltd., Freisenbruch- Meyer I nsurance Services Ltd., Conyers Dill & Pearm an, Bermuda Public Service Union, Bermuda Industrial U nion, the Bermuda Employers Council, Bermuda Investment Advisory Services Limited, Banker Inves tment Management Ltd., Chubb Bermuda (formerly
ACE Bermuda Insurance Ltd.), AXA XL (formerly XL
Group Ltd.) , and the Chartered Professional Accountants of Bermuda.
The commission advised that the committee
met and discussed, originally, over 129 changes.
These proposals were also submitted to the Pension
Commission Board for its review. Mr. Speaker, the
Government’s 2017 election platform stated that it
would (and I quote) “address the current structural
imbalance of pension benefits [that exist] . . . between
guest workers and Bermudians by requiring equal
treatment for Bermudian and ex -patriot labour. Currently, employers are not required by law to provide
the same level of pension benefits to guest workers as they are to Bermudians, thus making it more expen-sive to employ Bermudians.”
Members of the commission’s advisory committee were also invited to discus s and provide input on the [aforementioned] proposal. In addition to the
existing members of the committee, the commission
invited representatives of the Association of Bermuda
International Companies (otherwise known as ABIC),
the Hotel Employers of Bermuda, the Restaurant A ssociation, the Construction Association of Bermuda,
the Landscaping Association, the Bermuda Human
Resources Association and a former board member of
the Human Rights Commission to make represent ations on the implications of introducin g the proposal
on the respective industries or areas. Members of the committee and invited representatives of industry
groups met at the offices of Chubb, which kindly offered to host the series of meetings.
In addition, the Ministry of Finance and the
commission also held discussions with represent atives of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and R einsurers and Bermuda International Long Term Insurers and Reinsurers [BILTIR], and received helpful
feedback.
Mr. Speaker, it would be remiss of me if I did
not advise that there were a number of concerns expressed in broadening the coverage to include nonBermudian employees. In particular, the additional
cost to employers, the weakening of Bermuda’s competitive position as a cost -effective financial centre
and the imposition of additional administrative respon-sibilities were raised. However, it was recognised that a large number of employers in Bermuda already had
their non- Bermudian staff participating in either plans
registered under the Act or plans that ar e not required
to be registered under the Act. It should be noted that
plans that are not required to be registered under the
Act are very similar to registered plans, with the major
difference centred around the non- locking- in of pension funds on terminat ion or retirement, as well as to
have employees who are US persons, giving them the
ability to participate in 401(k) plans to benefit from
favourable US tax treatment on contributions.
Mr. Speaker, the Human Rights Act 1981 was
also discussed as it related to the current National
Pension Scheme exclusion of non- Bermudians other
than husbands or wives of Bermudians being potentially contrary to provision on discrimination on the
basis of a person’s national origin.
Mr. Speaker, Cayman was noted as an example of a comparable jurisdiction that had made it
mandatory for all employees to participate in their oc-cupational pension system. However, Cayman does
provide exemptions for non- Caymanian employees in
specific circumstances.
Mr. Speaker, while a number of the repr esentatives were not in favour of broadening the coverage to require the inclusion of non- Bermudian wor kers, they recognised that if the Government decided to
proceed with the proposal, it should do so as efficiently and cost -effectively as poss ible. To this end, a
number of helpful suggestions were put forth on how
this could be achieved, and I am pleased to advise
2620 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly that the Government has incorporated their suggestions in these amendments.
The most significant suggestion put forth by
the advisory committee and included in this Bill is the
phasing- in of contribution rates —5 per cent for employers and 5 per cent for employees for nonBermudians, over the next five years, as was the ori ginal practice when the legislation was first introduced
for Be rmudians and their spouses.
Also, it was agreed that certain exemptions
should be provided for non- Bermudian work permit
holders employed for a short term —i.e., one year or
under. However, upon receiving a renewal of their
work permit, they would be requi red to be enrolled.
Mr. Speaker, the Government recognises that
there are a number of plan members who have not
been able to accumulate a reasonable pension, as
they have not been employed long enough since the
Act was first introduced in January of 2000. And it
does not make financial sense to have them receive
between $100 and $290 per month when plan admi nistrators have to incur ongoing plan expenses which
will further reduce their small pension balance. Furthermore, at retirement, members may need to r eceive a lump sum to help with repayment of a mor tgage or other major financial commitments, or to pay for significant living expenses such as home or res idential care or health insurance upon leaving the
workforce.
The Government has heard the increasing
requests from the members of the public for greater access to their pension plans. And as a result, me mbers will be able to receive all of their pension funds in
a lump sum at retirement if they have $50,000 or less.
In addition, for those with larger bal ances, it will permit
a one- time payment of up to 25 per cent to be r eceived as a lump sum at retirement, as specified in
the regulations that will be introduced in due course.
Mr. Speaker, another important change r elates to the introduction of regulator y and administr ative fees to support the increasingly important work of
the commission. Honourable Members are advised
that the primary source of income for the commission is the annual government grant. A small amount of fee
income is also generated. It s hould be noted that the
original fees paid to the commission have not i ncreased since the inception of the Bill, nearly 20 years
ago. The Government recognises the important role
the commission provides and that, to further develop
the supervisory and regulatory capacity, it must enhance its resources and to enable its income to come
from more independent sources. Consistent with the regulatory models already established in Bermuda, it
is necessary to introduce fees for the various services
the commission provides and for those service pr oviders primarily benefiting from the mandatory occ upational pension system to pay those regulatory fees.
Mr. Speaker, the proposed Bill provides for a
number of significant policy and regulatory objectives, and the followi ng is a summary of the more significant
areas, some of which have been mentioned previously. [The proposed Bill]
• requires non-Bermudians to participate in re gistered plans;
• provides for additional financial hardship wit hdrawals for funeral expenses;
• perm its retirees to apply for financial hardship
withdrawals and to be exempt from having to pay the application fee;
• permits plan members or former members to
receive the entire value of their pension fund
account balance for defined contribution plans
or com muted value for defined benefit plans
at retirement, at $50,000 or below;
• provides for the ability of plan members at r etirement to receive up to 25 per cent of the value of their pension fund account balance or
defined contribution plans, or commuted valu e
for defined benefit plans, as prescribed in regulation;
• introduces regulatory fees payable by plan
administrators;
• changes the two- year vesting period of contr ibutions to one year;
• provides for the Minister of Finance to intr oduce regulations to control the fees charged
to plan members;
• introduces monetary penalties for noncompl iance by plan administrators and other related
persons;
• provides for certain exemptions for multi -
employer plans;
• includes all bonuses in calculating the amount
of pension contributions;
• requires employers to maintain specified pa yroll and employee- related information, and
failure to do so is an offence;
• introduces the payment of interest by emplo yers on their late pension contributions;
• in order to reduce plan expenses for smaller
plans, it increases the requirement for audited
financial statements for plans from $1 million
to $3 million; and
• introduces greater oversight of plan trustees,
and the specific fit and proper standards.
Mr. Speaker, the proposed amendments will
represent the most significant legislative changes
since the Act was first introduced. Initially, it was the
intent of the Ministry to pass the Bill in its current form
and then bring the legislation into force on the 1
st of
January 2020. This was to provide for t ransitional arrangements for the Pension Commission to enable
supplementary regulations to be drafted and intr oduced and to make any amendments to the Bill
deemed necessary during the winter legislative ses-sion by way of drafting an additional Bill entitled the


Bermuda House of Assembly National Pension Scheme (Occupational Pensions)
Amendment (No. 2) Act of 2019.
Under the current circumstances, it is now
proposed to make any required amendments by way
of floor amendments to this Bill, rather than drafting an additional Bill.
Mr. Speaker, the proposed amendments now
before this Honourable House include the requirement for all employees in Bermuda satisfying the eligibility
requirements to be enrolled by their employers in
Bermuda in a registered plan or financial institution plan. Both of these plans are approved by the commission, provided that they satisfy the various r equirements under the Act.
Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members are a dvised that representatives of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers has brought to the attention of the commission that US citizens on a work
permit in Bermuda may already participate in a 401(k)
plan, which they assert is broadly equivalent to plan
requirements under the Act. They have requested that such employers should not be require d to participate
in a Bermuda- registered plan. And if their employers
are forced to do so, it will involve additional regulation
and expense, which they believe is unnecessary and
costly, and could jeopardise their existing 401(k) plan
to recognition under the [US] Employee Retirement
Income Security Act of [1974], or ERISA, and related favourable US tax treatment.
They originally requested that these 401(k)
plans be automatically deemed registered, but not subject to the Act’s requirements. This view is not
supported, as “ deemed registered” is not a concept or
practice recognised under the Act and would compl icate the commission’s regulatory oversight and r esponsibilities.
Mr. Speaker, the commission has had exper ience with a small number of international business
employers who have voluntarily agreed to make changes to their existing 401(k) plans relating to
spouses of Bermudians where dual citizens, US and
Bermuda, are employed in Bermuda, so as to satisfy
the Act’s requirements. The commission has not r eceived any feedback from these employers that
changes required to be made to their 401(k) plan have
caused them unfavourable tax treatment by the IRS.
However, it is proposed that section 3 of the Act be
amended to provide for the non- applicability of the Act
to such US employees participating in a plan qualified
under section 401(k) of the United States Internal
Revenue Code. In addition, recognising that some
employers may wish to have their 401(k) plans regi stered under the Act, voluntary registration has been
provided for.
Mr. Speaker, this is the main floor amendment, while the other amendments are mainly of a
housekeeping nature and to provide greater certainty.
It is hoped that these floor amendments will become
quite clear when we are in Committee. Finally, Mr. Speaker, the Government recognises that some employees are under increasing f inancial hardship, and employers are facing increasing
costs of doing business. Therefore, it is proposed to
provide for employers and employees currently parti cipating in plans under the Act to voluntarily suspend
2 per cent of the requirement pension contributions
into their National Pension Scheme plan for a period of two years. By providing the option of such relief for
employers and employees, participating employees
could see their take- home pay increase by 2 per cent,
and participating employers could also benefit from
reduced operational costs of 2 per cent of payroll.
To provide for this proposal, I have tabled in
this Honourable House the National Pension Scheme
(Occupational Pensions) Temporary Amendment Act
2019 as a standalone Bill which will be debated later in this session.
Mr. Speaker, the proposed amendments contained in this Bill are sensible. They reflect the need of
the members of pension plans and are in line with
pension provisions and regulations in other jurisdi ctions. And I look forward to discussing them with Honourable Members.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I would like to thank
all of those persons within the Pension Commission,
the Attorney General’s Chambers, the Ministry of F inance and the private sector who have assisted with
the development of this Bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I
would like to thank the Minister for his remarks in
opening the debate. I have listened carefully. And as
always, he does a very thorough and detailed job in presenting the legislation.
Mr. Speaker, you and I and others here in
Parliament were in the Parliamentary Prayer Break-fast this morning, where we heard the good Reverend
Brown. And it would be remiss if I did not just quickly
touch on what it was that he said. He was observing
one of the great flaws of modern politics, which is that
we have unity in opposition, and that this was unhel pful and creates turbulence. It got me thinking that, actually, the better way of looking at that would be opposition, but in unity, where we are able to debate points
civilly and respectfully, and work together for the be nefit of the greater good.
And why do I say that? I am not going off on
some off-pieced track here. I am saying that because
this is a good exam ple of a Bill. There are things here
that we very much support and agree with. And there are things that we are extremely concerned about in this Bill. And I will take the House in a minute through
both of those.
2622 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly What I would like to do before I do that i s
touch back on a sort of favourite topic of mine and the
Minister’s that we have covered in the last few weeks
in the House. And that is the topic of consultation. And
I would like to thank the Minister for the level of con-sultation that was involved in t his Bill. Not only were
the industry stakeholders [consulted], who of course
are paramount and have had great input into this Bill,
and particularly the carveout for those in the 401(k) ,
which I will touch on in a minute, but also [there was] a level of co nsultation with the Opposition. And I thank
the Minister and his PS [Permanent Secretary] and,
indeed, Mr. Soares . . . excuse me, Mr. Sousa, who
chairs the commission, for that degree of consultation.
Because it is nice to have an opportunity to
hear not only the thinking behind the Bill, but to understand the amendments as they take shape, know
why they are being proposed and understand what
the policy and thinking are behind the legislation. B ecause with understanding and collective understan ding come better policy, better Parliament and better
legislation. And so, I am grateful not only to the three
members I just mentioned, the Honourable Member
(the Honourable Minister), his PS and Mr. Sousa, but
also to those who assisted them in this legislation.
Turning to the element of the Bill, there are
really —this is a big Bill. There are a lot of things in
here. No doubt, when we get to Committee, we might
hear from various people on various sides about some
of the aspects. But if I could use the cliché and t ake
this at a high level, there are really two high- level
points to this Bill. One is the drawdown function, the ability of people approaching and reaching pension able age to draw down some of their pension and to
make use of that pension. And that is something that
we support, although there are some concerns ass ociated with that, and the Minister touched on those
concerns. It helps to step back and look at the purpose of pensions, generally. And I will do that when
addressing that topic.
But the second high -level purpose of this Bill
is to extend the provision of pensions to non-Bermudians or people who are not spouses of Ber-mudians. And that is a philosophical political decision,
and there is some merit for why that is being done.
But, in my respectful s ubmission, there are also a lot
of bad things, bad repercussions that will arise, potentially, by doing this. And so, I try to treat this as fairly
as I can, pointing out both the positives and the neg atives. And in my personal view, the negatives out-weigh the positives, and I would discourage the Government in passing that aspect of this legislation.
So, let us step back for a moment, Mr.
Speaker, and look at why we have pensions. Because I think it is against that philosophical and practical underpinning that one should approach the benefits, or
otherwise, of legislation. Pensions are intended, mandated, at least here, to require people to set aside
money for their old age. It is a rainy -day fund. It is tak-ing the now and putting it off to the future, bec ause
one does not know what the future holds. One does not know the difficulties that may be encountered. And
if we can all set aside something for those days, that
is a positive thing.
Economies go up and go down. At the m oment, respectfully to the Minis ter, we are in the down.
Hopefully, we will get to the up sooner rather than lat-er. But when we are in the down, is that really the best
time to unlock the rainy -day money? The truthful answer is possibly. Possibly, because it allows for i ncome to be put back in the economic system, and that, hopefully, will amount to some extra spending
capital, which might support the economy. Possibly
not, however, because if we step back and we are
honest about it, who are the people most likely to
draw down that pensio n fund money? And this is a
point that my honourable friend, Susan Jackson, has
commented on more than once in this House. And
that is, it is often those most in need who might draw
down those pension monies because they need the
monies now. But in doing s o, they are potentially
caus ing themselves a future detriment and a future
harm. and again, I commend the Minister or, indeed,
the Ministry for the fact that they are prudently approaching the drawdown in a more restricted way,
because in other jurisdictio ns, in fact, in a number of
other jurisdictions, you could have 100 per cent dra wdown. And this drawdown, as I understand it, is limited to 25 per cent. And I do not know if that is the right
balance. But I think we should appreciate that there
may well be an unintended consequence to the dra wdown provision even if it is a good idea. And that uni ntended consequence is that those who draw down the funds, those who are desperate and most in need now
for the funds, may be depriving themselves of a rainy -
day fu nd later. And that risk will fall upon the comm unity as a whole. And so, we need to map out what
happens when that happens —not if, [but] when, b ecause it likely will.
So, on the first aspect of the Bill, the first highlevel aspect of the Bill, the Opposi tion, although we
express that concern, we are supportive of the dra wdown provision and we think generally that it is a good idea. On the second headline aspect of the Bill, the idea that we, as a society, as a community, as an i sland, should be extending the mandatory requir ements of pension provision beyond Bermudians and spouses of Bermudians to include foreigners, well,
that is a little more thorny.
Now, to be fair, I think I understand why that is
being done. It is being done because there is a per-ception held in some quarters of this Island, rightly or
wrongly, that it is more expensive to employ a Berm udian because you have to pay the pension element,
and it is cheaper to employ a foreigner (and I do not
mean that term in any derogatory way; I will j ust use
the word foreigner ) because it is [less] expensive b eBermuda House of Assembly cause you do not have to pay the pension element for
the foreigner.
I actually think that this perception is mistaken, respectfully. I think that people who hold that perception are not appreciating the attendant costs that are necessarily involved in bringing a foreign worker
to Bermuda. For example, there are work permit fees.
There are travel fees. There is a legal obligation to
repatriate a departing worker if they cannot repatriate
themselves. There is a housing allowance. And it is, in
fact, often the case, although it perhaps is not in the common vernacular of the community in our conversations, that a foreign worker is, in fact, more expensive and less desirable than a Bermudian worker. And
I say that as someone who is both an employee and an employer. But that is, apparently, the motive.
There is, potentially, a second motive as it
was explained to us at the meeting. And that is the
desire of the Pension Commission to grow and to
have a l arger budget and to be self -sustained. And
there are good reasons for that, and there are bad
repercussions from that. The good reason for that is
that, as I understand it, and I take Mr. Sousa at his
word, the Pension Commission is struggling— and I
use that term as neutrally as I can—to keep up with
the obvious breaches that are occurring. And it is a
difficult job with a small unit to seek to ensure that people do what they are supposed to do. And there is
a desire not only to become self -sustaining financially,
but also to grow, to be better able to deal with those
people who break the law and wrongly so. So, that is
an understandable wish. It is understandable.
But what it is also doing, and this is a negative, in my opinion, is that it is taking more m oney in
taxes or indirect taxes from the private sector to i ncrease the size of a public sector quango. Now, that is
a political and philosophical decision that this Government is taking. And it may be right. Or, in my r espectful submission, it may be wron g. But I am not
sure that growing the public sector, or the public sector quangos, is really the best use of the money that
belongs to our citizenry at this moment in time—
particularly not at this moment in time when we are in an economic downturn.
Turni ng to some of the other negatives of this
second aspect of the legislation, namely, the desire to provide or mandate pensions for foreigners, the Mini ster quite rightly recognised some of the downsides
that were presented to him. He mentioned three. One
was, of course, cost. And that is right. This is going to
increase the cost of doing business in Bermuda. The question is whether that increase in cost is justifiable or not for the outcome that is being sought. In my r espectful submission, it is not justifi able. And it is ce rtainly not justifiable at this point in time when people are struggling the way they are. Putting up the cost of doing business in Bermuda is not a good idea. And if
you are going to do that, you have to have a justific ation that outweig hs that bad idea. And so, making Bermuda more expensive, respectfully, is not a good
idea because it will lead to job losses.
The second point, and the Minister recognised
this, was the negative of the expense to the jurisdi ction as a whole. And we are desperately, desperat ely—and by we, I mean Bermudians, both sides of this
aisle and everyone else here—desperately trying to attract more business to our shores. Because, hopefully, most of us recognise that with the income of foreign capital and with the income of new businesses,
those are jobs for Bermudians. That is how we get money into our system. So, putting the expense of
that up at this point in time, particularly at this point in
time, is also, respectfully, not the best of ideas.
The third negative that the Minister quite rightly identified was that of red tape. We are desperately
reliant, perhaps over -reliant, on international business.
To make them jump over further administrative hurdles by the filling out of forms and mandating pension
funds, cr eating them if they do not yet exist —and I
accept, in most cases, many do exist —is creating yet
more burden and yet more red tape on those whom
we can least afford to inconvenience. We must be
flexible, with low regulation —proper regulation, but
low regula tion—and as little red tape as possible if we
are to survive, indeed, if we are to succeed.
Now, I fully accept that, in the case of intern ational business, many of these international busines ses already provide pensions across the board. Indeed, there ar e some large local companies that already
provide pensions across the board. They do so volu ntarily and without the need for a political/legal mandate to require them to do so.
And so, given that there are a large number of
foreign workers in Bermuda who already have pe nsions, who will be the natural (I will use the word victim, but I mean it politely) . . . who will be the natural
person who is dragged into the net of this further on-erous requirement? And the answer is, this is going to hit small and medi um-sized local businesses in Bermuda who employ a mixed workforce. This is not going to hit a large reinsurance company, because they
already do it. This is going to hit small to medium -
sized local Bermudian businesses who employ a mixed workforce. It is t hose Bermudian employers
who are now going to have to dig into their pockets,
try to find the already -scarce cash in those pockets to
provide an extra financial burden for their foreign
workers.
So, if this is a tax, and perhaps it is unfair of
me to des cribe it as one, but if it is an indirect tax or
even just a cost burden, who is going to have to bear
this cost burden? The answer is Bermudian emplo yers, small and medium sizes.
Now, what will happen to the money provided
by those small and medium Bermudian employers?
Well, the answer is, ultimately, that money will leave the Island. Because a Bermudian employer who at
this moment in time does not provide pensions for a
2624 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly mixed workforce, where there are foreigners, will now
be obliged to do so. And yes, t here is a two- year r equirement before this kicks in, and we can deal with
that in Committee. But after two years, out comes
Bermuda cash into a pension fund for a foreign wor ker. And then, what happens? Well, we know how diff icult it is for a foreign worker to remain in Bermuda.
We know how difficult it is for a foreign worker to become Bermudian and remain permanently. So, what is
the likely result in relation to that foreign worker, who
now has Bermudian employer cash into a pension fund? Well, the answer is, at some point in time, pro bably sooner rather than later, they are going to leave.
And they are going to take their money with them. So,
that money will leave our Island. It will go elsewhere.
And I think it is important to point that out. B ecause if we circle back to where I began, which is,
what is the point of a pension? It is to ensure that the
community provides for people in that community in
their old age. It is not to ensure that a community pr ovides for people external to the community with our
money in their old age. Now, pensions are a good
idea. I am not saying, morally or ethically, or when
things are good, that it is not a good idea to provide
pensions for all. And indeed, the Honourable Premier
of our Island often cites how we should bec ome more
like Singapore. Well, if we had Singapore’s bank balance, then yes, we could provide pensions for all. But
the sad reality is that we do not.
And so, I question whether or not it is wise at
all, and particularly so at this point in time, to be taking yet more money from Bermudians, from small and
medium -sized business owners, and giving it to foreigners, who will then leave our shores and take it
with them. And that is not an anti -foreign sentiment in
any way. It is just to ask whether this is the smartest
move. Because it clearly is not necessary.
And I know that the Minister remarked upon
the discrimination aspect of it in Cayman. But I would
respectfully remind the Minister that, of course, di scrimination is determined in any jurisdiction by the
statutes that exist. And just as it is permissible to di scriminate under our law favourably in favour of a Bermudian, under the Human Rights Act, so too it would
be very possible, if there was any challenge, to insert
a section in relation to pensions an d foreigners and
say that it should not be discriminatory. So, that notion
that we have to do this because the courts might
mandate it, respectfully, is flawed. It is for this Parli ament to decide that point, and this Parliament could do it. And that would not be any constitutional breach
because, of course, they are not protected by the
constitution in that way.
So, I understand that there will be some floor
amendments. I do not know, respectfully, whether those are the ones that were already shared with the
Opposition yesterday or the day before. If they were,
then we know those are coming. If there are other
amendments that are coming that we have not seen, I would be extremely grateful to see them as soon as
we could, and before Committee. And no doubt, Mr.
Speaker, with your indulgence, perhaps we could a ddress those a little more fully in Committee if we have
to, rather than in this debate stage, as I may not have seen them.
If you will indulge me one moment, Mr.
Speaker. Excuse me.

[Pause]

Mr. Speaker, those are the highlevel points on this Bill. I know that having pointed out some of the negatives, this Government is probably
unlikely to rethink. But this is probably not the best
time to be doing this, at least in respect of th e latter
aspect. And in respect to the former aspect, the dra wdown, which we support, I just would ask the Go vernment to think laterally and see what protective
mechanisms might be put in place for the future for
those people who find that they are unable to resist
the temptation to spend the drawdown monies now
and are left in the rainy day without sufficient funds.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
I recognise the Deputy Speaker. D eputy
Speaker, you have the floor.

Hon. Derrick V. Burgess, Sr.: Thank you, Mr.
Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I had no intentions of speaking, but after hearing the Member from the Opposition
speak about pensions, I had to get up.
Mr. Speaker, let me say this. Foreign workers
are very important no matter where they work. They
deserve pensions like everybody else. You get a foreign worker . . . and we have had a lot of them come
to this country and work for many years, 10, 20, 30
years. They deserve a pension. Workers are workers
no matter where they go; and we need to treat them
right. We will not be engaged—certainly, I will not be
engaged —in the exploitation of foreign workers because they are from another country.
In fact, this is nothing new. Foreign worker s
have had pensions in Bermuda for many years until
the law was enacted where they do not have to. We
have foreign workers, many of them receiving pensions from Bermuda, who live overseas. Many of the
hotel workers, many of them today receive pensions.
And they deserve a pension. They are no different. As
the Member who just took his seat said, they are not
protected by the Constitution. Well, so? If they are not
protected by the Constitution, it has nothing to do with
their workers’ rights, nothing to do w ith their benefits.
This Government is doing the right thing. We pro mised that, and that is what we are going to do, Mr. Speaker.


Bermuda House of Assembly And that is one thing I am proud of, that our
aim and objective is to treat all workers fairly. B ecause, you know, we hear fr om the other side mainly
when it is affecting their bottom line. But how about
the bottom line of the workers? They are no different. Those foreign workers are no different from us. And
that is why we need to protect them also. If you are
going to hire a f oreign worker, they should not come
on any less terms or better terms than a Bermudian.
And that is why and where the Bill is going through, to
even the playing field. And the Minister is doing the
right thing. He is phasing it in. You could say, Well,
let’s go from tomorrow, 5 per cent. But he is not. He is
phasing it in, Mr. Speaker, which I think is the right thing to do.
So, Mr. Speaker, I have nothing further to say.
I had no intention of speaking. But that prompted me to speak. Thank you, Mr. Speaker .

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, as m y colleague has said, in
principle, we support the premise. And the debate
around the expatriate worker, we said that, in essence, we support equalising the field. My colleague’s
comment was a matter of timing. Is this the right time?
The issues that I would like to raise, I heard
the Minister of Finance talk about the 401(k) , which I
presume is going to be a floor amendment. If a foreign employee has a 401(k) , that is a US employee, he
becomes exempt from having to have a national pe nsion plan with us. What accommodation is the Minister
entertaining for recognised plans in other jurisdi ctions? What are we going to do for Canadians? What are we going to do for [British]? Do they have nationalised plans that we can use to exempt them from being participants in our pension scheme?
Mr. Speaker, the other question that we have
in regard to this matter is the issue of, will we have our own pension plans recognised by foreign jurisdi ctions? Because it can go both ways. If I am working, if
I want to transfer my pe nsion to another jurisdiction,
will our pensions be recognised by other regulators in
that regard so that the pensions can be commuted to
other jurisdictions and the employee can carry it with
them when they leave? Just a question, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, my concern is the commission.
As the Honourable Member Derrick Burgess said, you
know, I am looking out for employees.
[Inaudible interjections]

Mr. Speaker, given the cha llenging times that we face economically, a number of small employers are not able to keep up with their expenses. And, Mr. Speaker, they are deducting pension contributions from their employees’ salaries and
are not . . . and those contributions are not being
transmitted to a pension scheme. We know of a number of employees who have found out. They have
gone to the Pension Commission to be told, Yep. I
see you working there, but no contributions have been
made.
Well, the employee says to the Pension
Commission, Sir, they have been deducting this mo ney for the past two or three years. What is my r ecourse? And at the end of the day, the question becomes, Does the Pension Commission have the r esources to enforce those type of challenges? Because the employers can have a work -out plan. But the
work -out plan does no t help the employee in the long
run. And if the employer, basically, dissolves his bus iness, the employee has lost. There is no recourse for
them. So, how do we address those employees who
have made contributions to, supposedly, a pension plan? Deductions have been made for three years,
and the employer is behind in payments, on a pa yment plan, closes up his business and the employee
is left out of pocket, even though the money was deducted from his salary for an extended period of time.
Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that the
commission —

[Inaudible interjection and laughter ]

Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that at some point the Pension Commission
is to be self -sufficient. An d they need, Mr. Speaker,
more resources to get their job done effectively. It is
my understanding they only have six employees, Mr. Speaker. And I can say emphatically, Mr. Speaker,
that they do not have enough resources and emplo yees to get the job done.
Now, I understand there is a plan to make the
Pension Commission self -sufficient like the BMA
[Bermuda Monetary Authority]. And as a cons equence, they will be charging fees. Heretofore, the payment and operating expenses of the Pension
Commission were being underwritten from the Consolidated Fund. In fact, they got a grant, if I remember
correctly, of approximately $1 million.

[Inaudible interjection]

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier,
before we broke for lunch, I had concerns about employers who fell behind in paying their employees’
pension contributions to the fund and commission.
The challenge that I have is that we have i nnocent people being made afoul of because of the fact that some employers are having financial difficulties, and some employers are just deceitful. I and many of
our MPs have been contacted by employees who
have been told that salaries have been deducted for
pension contributions and they called their pension
provider to be told that no contributions had been made, Mr. Speaker.
So, in light of this I say, as the regulatory body
for pensions the Pension Commission should have the resources to be able to protect the interests of our
employees in this space. Because at the end of the
day if these businesses become financially insolvent, the pension contributions made by the employees and
held by the employer and not passed on to t he pension provider, leave the employees in a precarious
situation, a situation of something that they did not
make themselves and they have very little recourse.
And so I would like for the Pension Commi ssion to do what they can to support these people. I
know a number of people have approached the Pension Commission for support, but at the end of the day
the Commission can [only] do what they can do with
the resources that they have.
And Mr. Speaker, as I also said earlier, there
is a move afoot to mak e the Pension Commission
more self -sufficient, as is the BMA. Do I have a problem with that, Mr. Speaker? I am ready and I am wil ling to explore that option, Mr. Speaker, because at the
end of the day they provide a vital service. And I believe, Mr. Speaker, that if we are to be a world- class
financial centre the Pension Commission will have a
crucial role to play and, therefore, they should be up
to scratch in regard to best practices, best standards, and the delivery of world class service to our emplo yees and employers of Bermuda.
Having said that, that transition . . . Mr.
Speaker, I would like for the Minister of Finance to speak to us about that transition. Is that going to ha ppen soon? Or is that going to be on the agenda going forward? Because right now I understand that we got
a grant from the Government to the tune of approx imately $1 million, and the Government also receives
fees from the corporate community, from some of the
pension providers, from the pension administrators,
and, indirectly, from our employees. Those funds will
go to . . . and currently go to the Consolidated Fund,
Mr. Speaker.
So going forward, if there is self -sufficiency in
that agency, then those funds will basically end up in
the coffers of the Bermuda Pension Commission, and
the grant from the Bermuda Government Consolida ted Fund will be eliminated. So, again, the funds will basically be passed on to the community, an increase
of cost of business, Mr. Speaker.
The other issue that I would like to speak to,
Mr. Speaker, is the issue on survivor benefits. And I
am just raising this because we have our technical
officers here. I have come across a number of widows
and widowers of second marriages. And when their
spouse died (the spouse prior to this spouse), the
spouse would receive his or her pension. Given that
he has a widow on his death and she is a second
spouse, or he is the second spouse, they have not
been receiving a benefit because they are the second
marriage. And so the question becomes, is there
something in place to protect widows or widowers who
are in their second marriage at the time that the em-ployee passes, especially if he has a substantive pen-sion plan and the face value of the plan is substantive,
Mr. Speaker? So I would like to ask the Minister if he
could speak to that as well.


Bermuda House of Assembly The other issue that I would like to speak with
the Minister [about], because it is mentioned in the
legislation, is record -keeping. What standards are we
subscribing to in regard to record- keeping and how
long we can keep the rec ords? Because, as you can
see, this can be a sensitive area. If we have to go to
court we have to have files in place. So what is the
statute of limitation in regard to holding files for pension plans? Is this being reviewed? Will the commi ssion look at this and see what can be done to make sure that we, basically, are in line with other jurisdi ctions in regard to record retention and the contents of
the records retained? So I would ask that the Minister
speak to that.
But I would definitely say that if the Pension
Commission is becoming self -sufficient, we would e ntertain the possibility of supporting that once the structure is in place. Because at the end of the day they
need the resources to play a crucial role in this country, the businesses are dependi ng on them to be the
monitor, the policemen of our pension fund industry,
and the employees are looking for them to provide
them with the infrastructure that will give them the pr otection that they need from employers who find themselves in difficult times .
Mr. Speaker, on those general comments I
would like to take my seat. I will have further comments in the Committee stage of the legislation.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Premier, continue.

[National Pension Scheme (Occupational Pensions)
Amendment Act 2019, second readin g debate, co ntinuing ]

Hon. E. David Burt: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, today we are fulfilling a pledge
that was made to the people of this country by the Bermuda Progressive Labour Party for a very long time. I can remember that I previously held the pos ition of Shadow Minister of Finance, and during our
Throne Speech replies, one of the things which we
identified, something which I said was unfair, was that this legislation when put in place in 1998 excluded
persons who held work permits. So, on a very fundamental basis it meant that Bermudians were disadv antaged, or more expensive to hire than those persons
who are not Bermudian. And that is a fundamental
issue of fairness, Mr. Speaker.

Mm-hmm.

Hon. E. David Burt: So it needs to be said that where
injustice is found, the Government must have the
courage to correct that injustice. This change is not a
popular change. And it is certainly not going to be a popular change for companies that have a majority of
their workforce that are expatriates.
However, it is our view that this not only is the
right change, but it makes sense to put Bermudians
on equal footing with non- Bermudians. We hear the
challenges and complaints when we are knocking on the doorsteps, and this is one step that is taken to fix
this fundamental issue of fairness and its fundamental
imbalance.
So I have heard, and I am grateful for . . . I
understand that the Minister of Finance had briefings with Members of the Opposition and also had sent
advanced copies of his Statement to our Members so
persons could be aware of this ver y important debate
and the multitude of changes which we are making,
Mr. Speaker —some of which you, we, had spoken
about because there are certain changes to this pension scheme which are necessary. So when we talk
about the different items for withdrawal, when we talk
about the fact that when there are small pensions b eing able to receive it all at once, and other things, these are changes which have been asked for for a
long time, and there are a lot of things in here that are going to benefit the people of this country.
I also note that the Minister of Finance has
stated that in order to lessen the impact this Bill may have on persons who may employ a large number of expatriate workers, or workers that are nonBermudian, there is going to be a reduction in the
mandatory pension levels to account for this change.
But let me clear what the effect of that is, Mr. Speaker.
The effect of that is that if you are an employer who
employs a majority Bermudian workforce, you will see your employment costs temporari ly go down. If you
are an employer who employs a majority non -
Bermudian workforce, you will see your employee
costs go up. And that, Mr. Speaker, is also something
that we should be encouraging, because we should
be encouraging the hiring of Bermudians ins ide of this
economy. And this, Mr. Speaker, is something that is
particularly important.
2628 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly I must also touch on one particular issue, Mr.
Speaker, and this issue is important. One of the things
of which I stated briefly a little bit earlier today, and
also at other times that I have spoken, is the need to
abandon the status quo and the need to move toward the future. Technology is changing the way that ever ything works, Mr. Speaker. And I heard some comments from the Honourable Member who just took his
seat f rom constituency 8, the Honourable Cole S imons, speak about the fact that there are some types of remittances which are not taken by employers, that are not going to the Pension Commission, et cetera.
Here is what is important to note, Mr. Speaker. In a future of technology, in a future that is driven by whether they be digital based currencies or FinTech (more broadly) that is something that will
cease to be an issue. Because when you have pr ogrammable money, money that is paid by an employer to employees, all the deductions can be automatically
remitted instantly via technology to where they go. So,
you do not have that delay, you do not have that chal-lenge, and employees and employers have less of a
burden to either file or to report and employees can
make sure and know and understand that their items
are being handled in the proper way and fashion.
So as we move to a future of technology, Mr.
Speaker, we have to also recognise that a lot of things which are a challenge nowadays in our press to make
sure t hat we have persons in Bermuda who are able,
that are in coding camps right now that are able to
develop technology solutions for the future, that these
things will become easier and we will be able to am eliorate some of the concerns which have been raised
by Honourable Members.
So I want to congratulate the Minister. I know
that it has been a lot of work getting this here. I understand there are technical officers [here] from the Mi nistry of Finance; the Financial Secretary, Mr. Manders;
and also Mr. Peter Sousa, the Chairman of the Pe nsion Commission.
Our pension legislation is old, it is in need of
improvements. And, in addition to this, Mr. Speaker, I
am looking forward to future changes that will allow individuals greater access under certain circumstances to this $3 billion pot of money to help to stimulate
investment and other things for individuals. It is i mportant that we recognise, in an economy where cap ital is a challenge, that if individuals want to take the
risk with their own money, by their ow n choice, by
their own selves, that they should be allowed to do that as they are in other countries, as long as we are
managing that for the long term, Mr. Speaker. So that is not a part of [what is] here, but that is certainly
something that is yet to c ome because it is important.
And I want to take the time, Mr. Speaker, to
also make sure that I recognise that there has been a
lot of commentary about what the Government has
said, the direction where it is going to move when it
comes to giving people acc ess to their pensions. It is a very simple statement, Mr. Speaker, it is the people’s money. Things in the National Pension Scheme
belong to the individuals. And so what has been said
is very simple. If you like your pension where it is now,
keep it there. However, if you want the option to do
something more with your money, to make that i nvestment, to attempt to . . . say that you want to put a
down payment on a house. Or say that you want to buy a piece of equipment for a small business. Or say
that you w ant to pool with other persons to start a m edium sized business and have access to that capital.
You should have that particular option.
That is the option which we are giving to pe ople, Mr. Speaker, because we believe that persons should be trusted with t heir money. And it is som ething that is fundamental. So, with all the scaremon-gering around, it is very simple. If you like it where it is, leave it where it is. If you want to do something di fferent with a small portion of it, we will give you the
ability to do that as well.
So I look forward to these particular pension
changes which I know will help many people in the
economy and I look forward to future pension changes
which will unlock capital, which can help to develop
our economy.
Thank you, Mr. Speak er.

But Mr. Speaker, I do want to
speak to this Bill. It is a long -awaited Bill, particularly
for those peopl e who find themselves in hardship—for
our seniors and also for employers.
I have had constituents call me numerous
times, Mr. Speaker, and they want to sit down and talk
to me in regard to their pension and how they have
reached a certain age, I will say over the age of 80,
and they have less than $50,000 in their pension
scheme, and how they do not have access to that
money —particularly those seniors who do find themselves in hardship. And it may be for some sort of
medical reason that they may need acces s to their
pension, particularly, such as, with the benefit for HIP where we know that there is a limitation in regard to the benefit for medications.


Bermuda House of Assembly And so when you find yourself with health
conditions and you have limited benefits for prescri ption drugs or medications and you want to be able to
get assistance for conditions that you have, just
through ageing, and you do not have the capacity to have access to the money that you have saved while
you were employed, I think that it becomes very unfair, lik e we have already mentioned, when this is your
money.
This is a scheme that Government did bring to
the table. And I just want to read . . . there was a . . . I
do not know if everyone remembers Suze Orman.
She was here in Bermuda back in 2014. I believe C olonial brought Suze Orman in. And if you will allow me
to read it, this is an article from Bernews, just some
words that Suze Orman shared. And Suze said: “ One
of the greatest things that this country did was to
make it mandatory to contribute to a pension. ” But
additionally, she said that we should be . . . and I am
sure all the pensioners out there who encourage us to have a pension would also say additionally that we should be adding more to our pension.
Oftentimes because I am in the field and I
work w ith seniors I see when seniors need access to
their pension funds. It could be for a number of reasons. And I just want the public to also understand —
you know, the younger people in the employment i ndustry —be very vigilant and understand that while we
have employers, and we are also employees, one
thing that does not change, Mr. Speaker, is that we
will all age and we will all want to have some money
that we have access to that we have saved over the
years. And we should have access to that money, par-ticula rly if it is under a certain amount, such as the
$50,000 mark. If you are up in age, if you are over the
age of 80, 90, and you still cannot touch your money, I
think that this sometimes can be very shameful. So I
am very grateful for that change that we are allowing
persons to be able to have access to their money.
I also want to highlight that it is important that
as employees that we are vigilant to the Acts that are
out there— particularly this one —because we do not
take note sometimes of the legislation that is out there
that will help us, or we do not take note of the legisl ation that is out there which we have rights to. And so,
it is our duty as an employee to know what this legi slation is saying to us, what this type of legislation is
saying to us, because we do not want employers to be
telling us information that we do not fully understand.
And so this particular legislation, while it may not be
relevant to some of our younger employees at this
time, it will definitely be relevant to us if we are expe-riencing any sort of hardship or as we become seniors
and we put aside this money for us as we age.
One of our colleagues already spoke to the
fact of how, you know, it may not be a good idea for
foreigners to have to be mandated to contribute to a
National Pension Scheme. But again, this is their
money that they will have access to. And we already spoke to the fact that foreigners sometimes stay in
Bermuda year after year after year after year, even as
they have aged as well. And so, I am sure that this
money will come in handy to them as they age. So, I
do not see it as a bad thing.
It is a mandated pension that we are asked to
put aside—both the employer and the employee—
which, I believe, will take us a long way and will be
extremely beneficial to us in the long term. Because
we do have guest workers or foreigners or PRCs who do end up staying in Bermuda who, sometimes, have no access to funds as they age, and they find themselves in a very difficult position in having to have
money because they may not necessarily have chi ldren or family that are here to be able . . . where they
can call on them for assistance. So, this will come to
benefit for our guest workers or non- Bermudians.
So, this particular Act, Mr. Speaker, is a longawaited one. I am sure those for whom it is relevant
will surely appreciate it and they will be thanking us in
the future in regard to the changes to this particular
Act that have been made.
The other piece that I just want to mention in
regard to the contributions that have to be made is,
there is a change (which I have noted) in regard to
employers not paying the employee- related sorts of
pensions and how it is an offence to do so and how there will be a sanction placed upon employers if their pension contributions are late. As an employer, if you
are allowed to get away with not paying things like
pensions, which we know occurs now . . . there are
many employers out there that have to juggle their
funds to be able to sustain their businesses and their
companies. And if there are no penalties put in place,
then they will try to . . . they will take a long time in
paying their contributions. And so, with penalties in
place, the aim is to hopefully discourage people from
not thinking that paying their contributions or taking
employees ’ contributions out of their pay cheques and
not actually paying into the schemes . . . hopefully it
will discourage that sort of behaviour.
So, Mr. Speaker, I do believe that this has
been a long- awaited change to the National Pension
Scheme that many, many, many people will be able to take advantage of, should the need come and should the time arise.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Good afternoon.
2630 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Mr. Neville S. Tyrrell: Mr. Speaker, having heard the
Minister’s brief on this, I am cer tainly very happy to
rise and support him in bringing these amendments to
the National Pension Scheme. I congratulate him and
his team of advisors for their forward thinking.
Mr. Speaker, I would venture to be bold
enough to suggest that the National Pens ion Scheme
must rate in the top three pieces of recent legislation that has benefitted such a large group of working
Bermudians.
The Minister stated in his brief that he est imates that there are approximately 25,000 and up-wards plan members, so it certai nly is serving its purpose.
Mr. Speaker, an article in the Royal Gazette of
[28] September 2019 on this subject described the National Pension [Scheme] as innovative saying it
“will have a long- lasting positive impact.” One of the
most positive things I think they have said for a long
time. Mr. Speaker, I would describe it as a gift that can
keep on giving.
Mr. Speaker, let me say that the National
Pension Scheme, which came into operation on the 1
st of January 2000, was long overdue, certainly long
overdue. And the reason I say that is that private pe nsion plans had been in existence like 70 years before
the year 2000. So, for a country as progressive as
Bermuda, I think we were way behind in bringing this legislation, the National Pension Scheme, into p lay.
Mr. Speaker, I make mention of that fact because there are some private companies whose workers had only the Social Insurance plan to look
forward to when they retired, which, I might add, its
intention (the Social Insurance plan) was only intend-ed to be as a top- up to other pension plans for private
workers who may have had one. That plan —the S ocial Insurance plan— was really not intended for persons to live on, because we all know that the max imum, I believe, is somewhere around $1,500 a month. And I do not know too many people that could
live on $1,500 a month. Of course, some people
would have to if they did not have another source of
pension.
Mr. Speaker, I can certainly give you some
true examples of why all of these amendments which are being put to the National Pension [Scheme] are
necessary. One in particular that I definitely want to
talk about is allowing plan members with a real fina ncial need to get access to a portion of their pension
now—meaning getting it now. Now, I support this
when there is that real —and I have to say “real” —
financial need. I am not a big supporter of drawing
down from pensions. I am really not. I understand
what pensions are about. But, as I said, if there is a
real financial need I see no reason why we should not
allow that to happen, because the only thing that
could happen is that these people could become a
burden to society later on anyway if they keep drawing down on their pensions. So that is my reason; but I
certainly support that change, the amendment.
Mr. Speaker, I note from the Minister’s brief
that the committee discussed over 129 other changes
. . . changes in total. So I anticipate more improv ements. We have heard from the Premier, he said he
expects it himself. So I am certainly looking in the f uture for more improvements to the National Pension
[Scheme].
Mr. Speaker, I knew persons, actually, who
were already near retirement when the National Pe nsion [Scheme] came into play in 2000. So, what that meant was that they were retiring. They retired with
small pensions. And based on the legislation, they
were not able to take those monies at the time and
administrators had the burden (if I can use that word)
of paying out on a monthly basis sums of about $100 to $300 a month. Well, let me say that this work ed
against the employee (or the former employee) because the administrator still had to administer a small
plan and put the same efforts into it as they would a
big plan. So, it made sense . . . I think it makes a lot of
sense that if there are small pensi ons—and the figure
being suggested is $50,000—that they be given that
in a lump sum, one time. So I think there is a definite
benefit there.
Mr. Speaker, what I also find innovative is
allowing, upon retirement, the option to withdraw up to
25 per cent f rom a member’s plan. I am sure we can
all recognise the benefit of that. But, at the same time,
let me say that I do counsel people in taking that o ption—and mind you, it is a voluntary option— because,
again, it hits their final pension and, obviously, pe ople’s money runs out. People are living longer. We are
all living longer, [we know this] from statistics. And so,
obviously, one needs to be careful in how one manages their pension plan. But I think that we should be
able to trust people enough with their money and that
a 25 per cent lump- sum payment could come in very
handy for a lot of . . . for numerous things.
Mr. Speaker, I did say that I could give you
many examples. I will not bore you with all of those.
However, I will state that making [the] Nat ional Pe nsion [Scheme] inclusive of all workers —that means
expatriates and Bermudians —I think is a good move.
My colleagues have already stated why in some i nstances. And I think persons need to accept that it is
good. And I can say this (which has also been said
already): Many good employers (and I use the word “good” employers) already had and have pension
plans which include both expats and Bermudians in
there. So I would certainly encourage those good em-ployers to encourage their counterparts to buy in to
this and allow their expatriates, under the legislation as we are looking at, the opportunity of coming into the Pension [Scheme] and not just look at it from a
financial view.
I personally look at it as a levelling of the pla ying field. That is the wa y I am looking at it. Is it very


Bermuda House of Assembly simplistic? Yes. But I certainly feel that it is worth looking at. I am not going to be long, Mr. Speaker, so I am
letting you know this.
Almost lastly, Mr. Speaker, I am in support of
the suggestion and we are going to, o bviously, have
the pension holiday that is being proposed in the Mi nister’s brief discussed. It could work. It certainly is g oing to be a benefit to both the employee and the em-ployer, so I certainly support that pension holiday that
is being suggested. Again, however, I do encourage
persons because it is going to be a voluntary option.
Again, if an employee feels that, Look, I still want to
continue making my pension contribution, I would encourage people to do that. I really do, because, again,
it benefit s them in the long run. So, as I said, I support
it, but at the same time I caution people to look at it in
a way that benefits them in the long run.
Mr. Speaker, let me end where I started. I
want to support the Minister in bringing these (what I
will ca ll) much -needed amendments. The National
Pension [Scheme] is 20 years old. So I am sure that,
you know, the 129 other things in total that the committee came up with have been well looked at and I
certainly would encourage them. And, as I said, I su pport a nd congratulate his team of advisors for their
forward thinking in improving the National Pension Scheme.
Mr. Speaker, I will take my seat. Thank you.

—number 19.
Honourable Member, you have the floor.
Hon. Jeanne J. Atherden: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I think one of my colleagues said earlier at the
beginning that this is something that we recognise is
important. And I think this is something that, in most
cases, we understand and agree with. There might be
a question or two which I think we will ask over time just to understand what the reaction was wi th respect
to the people that were consulted, because, of course,
the Minister had indicated that lots of people were
consulted. And I had one question in particular terms
of what the consultation . . . what the answer was they
came up with.
I think for m e, when I start to look at the fact
that we are going to allow people who have . . . not
allowed, but we are going to require people who are
non-Bermudian to have to have an enrolment in the
Pension [Scheme] . . . and I heard Member Burgess
talk about his concern. And I think, for me, I realise that there are lots of people who have enrolment in a pension plan as a requirement for everybody in their
organisation, regardless of whether they are Bermudian or non- Bermudian. I think that if one were to look at
it, perhaps there are certain industries where perhaps that has not occurred, and we are hoping that this will occur.
I think I always had looked at it from the point
of view that if someone hired a Bermudian . . . and it
has been suggested that not enrol ling people in a
pension plan was a hiring decision—a hiring decision to make people save money. But I had always opera ted on the basis that hiring a Bermudian was beneficial
to you because hiring a Bermudian meant that, lea ving aside what my colleague sai d about the fact that
you have a work permit and you have to bring them here, et cetera, et cetera, I have always gone on the
basis that hiring a Bermudian meant that you got someone who knew about the country. You got
someone who you could potentially promote in your
organisation. And Bermudians are very entrepreneur ial and learn well, so I had always gone on the basis
that getting a Bermudian meant that you were inves ting in someone to grow in your organisation. And I
was hoping and anticipating that most organisations
would do that.
But, leaving aside the fact that some did not,
this is going to turn around and encourage people to
make sure that the playing field is level. But on the question of making it level, I guess there are a couple
of things that crossed my mind. And one was the decision to turn the vesting from one year . . . some two
years into one year. And the reason why I was cur ious, and hopefully the Minister will tell us what the industry, the people who were consulted, said. The
reason I t hought about that is because I thought in the
past the two- year vesting was deemed to be (what I
thought to be) a reasonable time for, one, by the time
the person came with you and the fact that after two
years you sort of assume that they are going to sta y
and they are going to be on the Island and they are
going to be part of your organisation (whether they are
on the Island or not), recognising that to get to enrol a
person in a scheme you have to . . . in most cases,
you always have to go through a probationary period before that happens. So that is 90 days, three months. Then, after that, you have to go through all of the documentation to make sure that they are eligible and et
cetera, et cetera.
So, I was just curious as to the rationale for
dropping i t from two [years] down to one. And that is a
curiosity question on my part from the point of view of
what the industry said. Because administration costs
have always been a concern for pension administr ators and whomever, whether it is enrolling people or
terminating people from the plan. And it seems to me that in Bermuda there has become a greater turnover
in terms of staff as of late. Years ago I would sort of say that, by and large, people got with an organisation
and they stayed there 5, 10 . . . you could look in the
2632 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly newspaper and you see all of these people there ha ving been recognised for long service awards, et
cetera. It seems to me that [now] there is a greater
turnover. And if that is the case, I just worry about the
fact that the administrators are going to have to deal
with enrolling these people and then, after that, when
they go to another plan, they have to then not only
terminate them, but they have got to enrol them in
another plan somewhere else.
So, I was just curious if the Minister could just
indicate what the feedback was that he got from the industry with respect to lowering it from two years
down to one, recognising that you are really talking
about vesting and portability. Not necessarily saying
that you do not have people enrolled in the plan, but it
is the vesting element in terms of where they go after
that.
I think the other things that came to my mind
related to . . . I know this thorny issue of allowing people to have access to their pension contributions, if
you will, is somet hing that has been discussed for a
long time. I know that at one stage, you know, you
had people . . . the question was, what is only . . .
could you only have it for medical reasons? And then,
it was if you could have it for education. And then afterwards , could you have it for mortgages? So, it became very judgmental in terms of what was going to
be deemed to be something that people could invest
in.
So, now that you have made a broader range
of reasons why persons could draw down on their pensions, I th ink that is commendable. My only co ncern is to make sure that the people who are drawing
down on these plans have sufficient education and
knowledge about what it means if they draw down,
from the perspective of either drawing down and ult imately what they are going to get as a pension later,
or the possibility that if you draw down, that later on you can turn around and top it up. Because som etimes people do not realise that this is an option. And I hope that it is an option, that if you draw down, and
your circumstances change, that you could come back
afterwards and start to put some more money into the
fund so that by the time you retire you actually are no
worse off. Because sometimes people are . . . they
want to be helpful to their family members or w hatever, and they do things because they want to be supportive, not realising that in the end they are going to
bear the burden when their plan is less than what they
thought it was and you do not have that type of recovery.
So with respect to that, I just wanted to be
sure that as we go forward the Pension Commission
and all sorts of other people just educate people on
the fact of what their choices . . . I mean, I think it is
good that there is going to be, what I call, this delay,
this opportunity for people to get into getting themselves up to the 5 per cent (for those people who have
to transition from not having pensions for their non-Bermudian workers) and ultimately getting up to what
the law mandates, because that will give them an opportunity to be able to adjust their finances. But I still
believe that the bottom line that is we should be trying to encourage them to employ as many Bermudians as possible because, as I say, Bermudians can grow in
their organisations so they have the long- term benefits.
But, to me, that is at least a way of facilitating
something that could create a financial hardship on
people now who many times are in industries where the margins are very thin. And, therefore, some of
these changes that we put in place (when you have
thin margins) actually are, you know, the things that
decide, Can I stay in business , [or should] I go out of
business ? Because we do not want anybody to decide
that they can no longer be financially viable because
then that is bad. But people have to sta y in business if
they are efficient and if they do a good job and it is
viable, [has] financial viability.
I think the two other questions that I had . . .
and I did have to go back to the Act and I think I understand it. When they were talking about vest ing after one year, that if the person leaves then they get to
move their money to another plan and they have to
tell whoever the administrator is where they are going
so it had to be there.
The thing that I did not see (and maybe I did
not read far enough into the Act) was if someone was
going off the Island . . . I just wondered what ha ppened. I know years ago if you went off the Island and
if your money had not vested—let us just say when you had the two years, if your money had not ves ted—then you just gave people their money back. And
so, I just wonder if you can explain to me and maybe
other people who are out there that the funds for persons who have gone off the Island, if their employer has now made . . . put the contributions into a plan,
what hap pens? What happens (1) if it is under a year;
and (2) what happens if it is over a year?

Mm-hmm.

Hon. Jeanne J. Atherden: Okay, if perhaps you can
do that. Because I think that sort of makes everybody
understand how people might decide to st ill pay their
workers. I do not think anybody wants to have a situation where people say, Oops! It’s coming up to a year,
time to go, because I am going to have to turn around
and I am going to have to make contributions, et
cetera. Because that is counter productive.
With respect to . . . it is good to see that bonuses are included in the pension calculation because
I think that has been a question that has come up in
the past as to, you know, in some places a bonus is a
real significant part of the person’s wage package. In
other places a bonus is something that you cannot rely on. But in some other places a bonus is there and
you know that their regular salary is being, if you will,


Bermuda House of Assembly reduced because you have got a guarantee of a bonus and that is the enti re package that you have. So,
it is good to see that this is in there.
Let me see. My colleagues talked about, you
know, the 401(k) and, I guess, he did raise the question about other jurisdictions as to whether you are
going to give recognition . . . and I am curious about
that because I do know, if I remember correctly, that if
you had . . . if you were leaving the Island, some of
your money could be transferred, let us just say, to the UK, and be enrolled into a plan that was there. So, presumably if yo u are going to allow them to do that,
then there might be a reason to actually recognise
that a plan in the UK is also something that should be
considered.
Draw down provisions . . . rainy day funds . . .
the vesting . . . government grants . . . Okay, I think
that those are the issues that I wanted to bring up in
terms of general discussion. And I think anything else
that I had I think I will probably bring up at the time
when we go into Committee.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker and Mr.
Minister.

Thank you, Member.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
I recognise the Honourable Member Dunkley
from constituency 10.

Hon. Michael H. Dunkley: Thank you, Mr. Speaker,
and good afternoon colleagues. And first let me thank
the Minister and the Pension Commission for their
work in bringing this legislation here today.
It is one of those things that everybody has an
acute interest in, but it is also one of those important
pieces of legislation that is very, very tricky and diff icult to find the right balance in meeting the needs of
the people and protecting the future of the people.
And I say that in the context, Mr. Speaker,
that if you take a look at Bermuda here now we have
a demographic of where there are many, many more
seniors than there ev er used to be. I remember when I
first got involved in politics and was canvassing, the
highest band of age with the greatest number of people in it was probably the 35 to 45 age group, but now
it is the over -65 age group. So when you couple that
with the large number of seniors that we have in our
community and the fact that they are on fixed incomes
and the cost of living is increasing, it sets up a very
difficult period for seniors in their [sunset] years.
And so as we look at pension legislation and
as legislators we try to come with the best balance of
how we are going to help our people as we move forward, there is no perfect solution. And that is why I
think we are here today with the two main points of
this legislation: should non- Bermudians contribute and
the percentage you can take from your pension.
I have always been one who thought that ev eryone should contribute. And I know in my time in business that there are a number of non- Bermudians
who, given the choice, because a lot of employers . . .
because up until this time when the legislation is
passed, a lot of employers gave non- Bermudians the
choice to contribute or not to contribute. Some of them
did not want to contribute, some did want to contri bute. So, there was always . . . people had their own
varying views on it.
You know, a lot of people come to Bermuda to
work for a short period of time. They want to have ac-cess to all their money and they want to send their money home when they need to send it home, so they
do not want to be tied up into a pension plan. And so,
we can have a long debate on what is the best way to
approach it. But I think, at the end of the day, we must
understand that it is expensive to bring nonBermudians in. And while they do create an unlevel playing field in certai n cases (because up until this
point in time Bermudians do have to pay into their
pensions and non- Bermudians do not), it is a discussion that can have many interesting facets to it as we
go forward. And so, I think that in this difficult env ironment that we have, in this difficult business env ironment that we have, there are some businesses
that are going to be feeling the pressure. But it is the
best thing to do going forward, to try to level that pla ying field and to also protect people’s futures.
Now, t he challenge that we need to understand with pensions is —and I think all Members of this
Honourable Chamber understand it, but those that
listen on the radio need to perhaps reflect on it, so I
think it bears repeating because Members have talked about it previously in this debate—is that pension legislation is still relatively new. It came into effect in the year 2000, so we have not really punched into the 20
th
year yet. And so, anybody who has retired over the
last 10 years or the last 20 years and is retiring in the
next 10 or 15 years or so is going to find themselves
faced with a pension that is just not going to meet the
requirements they need because Bermuda is an expensive place to live, and because they have not paid
into for that long a period of time.
Now, as we move further down the road, pensions will build up naturally. So the younger people
who are getting into the workforce or have just gotten
into the workforce in the last 5 or 10 years are going to be in a good position. But typically, at t hat age, Mr.
Speaker, you do not think about a pension. You want
access to your money, you want to be in control of
your money, you want to spend your money where
you would like to, and you do not think about your r etirement. You do not think about not hav ing an income
and needing a solid income going forward.
So, we are caught in a very difficult position
here because we have to take care of people who
have retired, or who will be retiring shortly and their pension just has not been paid into long enough to
make it work. And that is why, I guess, the 25 per cent
is coming into effect. And I think that it is a good thing
2634 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly but we have to be very careful about it because there
are many people who will use the 25 per cent alloc ation (if they want to, or up to t hat level) and will put it
to good use. And there are many good uses that they
could put it to. There are some people who would take their 25 per cent just because they believe that they
want to invest it themselves and they believe they can
invest it bett er than their pension provider’s inves tment fund, and people do that.
But then, Mr. Speaker, there are other people
who will take the money and use it in unwise fashions
and then be stuck. So any Government has the real
dilemma. Yes, we want to help our people, we want to
allow them access to money which is rightly theirs.
But at the same time we, as legislators and leaders in this community given the authority to make decisions,
also need to remember that in future years those
same people who we allowed to access [their pe nsions] could be coming back to us without any money
and Financial Assistance has to help them in some
way. That is the real challenge that we face with this legislation.
And, you know, on the face of it, the 25 per
cent is the best thing to do, as I said previously about
another part of this. It is the best thing to do. But we
need to understand that down the road we could be
facing some dilemmas. And Government might be called into the fray to deal with some people who have
used their pension money (in what they believed was
the proper way) and now they are stuck and the state
needs to help them as they move forward. This is a
real challenge that we will have to face.
Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Premier has
been repeating the comment that they, the Honour able Premier and his colleagues, want to bring the $3
billion back to Bermuda that is invested in pension
funds. And while on the face of it that is a great talking
point —a lot of money, everyone gets excited— we
have to remember . . . and as the Premier did say during his comments today, that it is your money, you
should be able to use your money how you wish to
use it. So, by saying bring $3 billion back to Bermuda,
the only money that is going to come back to Berm uda is the money that individuals who want to have access to, [that] the Pension Commission allows them to
have access to, and then they can use it. It is not g oing to be $3 billion coming back to help Bermuda pr ogrammes for every Bermudian. That is not going to be
the case.
And I think we should be clear on this because [as] politicians we like to make our initiatives
sound like the best thing since sliced bread. But when you get right to the bread itself and start to eat it, it
tastes a lot different. So, people will be able to access
their pensions, but they will have to know that once
they use it, it is gone. And, you know, we are living longer and longer and longer, and retiring at 65 for
many people, Mr. Speaker . . . we see most Bermudians are hardy. They have a lot of pasti mes that they keep busy [with] when they retire. Many people live
25, 30 years past their retirement age and have a
good quality of life because they are still healthy.

Mm-hmm.

Hon. Michael H. Dunkley: But it gets . . . I was star ting to thi nk about this myself the other day, Mr.
Speaker. Can you imagine retiring at 65, thinking
about how you will live and how long your pension will
last . . . what do you plan for? Fifteen years? That
would be an unwise plan at this point in time because
many people are living 20, 25, 30 years past the time
they retire with a good quality of life.
So, there is a big cloud in the future when it
comes to pension funds. And what we can do as legislators here is make sure that we have a Pension
Commission that does the very best they can do, and
they have shown that they do that. We have a Pension Commission that has given the guidance that
they need and the support that they need to uphold all
the rules that they operate under, and that is i mportant.
And as I sa y that, Mr. Speaker, I never supported empire- building. And I am not directing this
comment at anybody or any party or any individual,
but too often we see that government departments all
around the world slowly keep building and building and building. It costs more money, it becomes less
manageable, and they have a harder time filling their
mandate. And what we need to ensure as we help the
Pension Commission do what they have to do, is make sure that they stay lean and mean with the r esources that they ha ve to protect because . . . we say
it all the time, these are real people’s lives. This is
what people are living on, off their pension. So, we
need to equip them with the resources they need to be effective, but there always has to be a balance.
And we ha ve to respect and hold the Pension Commission’s feet to the fire to use that money in the most
appropriate way.
And one of those ways, Mr. Speaker, is that
we need to go after the people who are deducting pensions and are not paying them into the coffers. I
am sick and tired of hearing stories about people who
are not following the rules that this House of Assembly
has set through the years, whether it is social insurance payments, regular pensions or health insurance
payments. Enough is enough! And, you k now, Members want to talk about individuals. I am not here to talk about individuals; I am here to talk about the pol icy and what is right and how the people suffer because of abuse. And if we can give more money to the
Pension Commission to allow them to have the ability
to reach out to people, make them pay the money or
investigate, our lives will all be better because there
will be money that is invested in people’s futures and they can use it at the appropriate time.


Bermuda House of Assembly And so, I stand up today to support my co lleagues with our support generally in this legislation. I
have highlighted two areas. And the last thing I will
say, Mr. Speaker, is I want to reiterate the fact that the
people that we serve need to understand and accept that a pension is an invest ment in their future. Howe ver, it is a difficult scenario because many people are
struggling in Bermuda at this present time. The cost of
living is very high at this present time, so they have to
balance the needs of trying to access some of the
pension to get them over the hump and saving that
pension for the rainy day. And that is not going to
change in the near future, and many more people are
going to retire and still struggle at making their ends
meet because their pension is not going to make do with the challenges we face with increasing health
care.
But this is one small step that I think is a step
that both sides of this House can support. And I look
forward to the amendments that the Honourable Mi nister tabled earlier to be explained.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
Does any other Honourable Member wish to
speak?
Minister.

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank colleagues
for their contributions to this debate on this Bill. Before
moving into Committee, I would like to provide some
clarifying comments and some answers to some of the questions that were raised this morning and this
afternoon.
I know much has been spoken about the
Government’s election platform and regularising ha ving non- Bermudian or expat workers, guest workers,
contribute as Bermudians do. I take the view that
good policy is also good politics. I have not reviewed
the Hansard from the late 1990s to see what was said
on this issue when this legisl ation was first contemplated over 20 years ago, but it might be instructive for
all of us to have a look at it and see what the debate
was at that point. And I am sure that some of the arguments that were made then are probably not di ssimilar to the ones t hat are being made today with
respect to the burdens that are being placed on employers to fund contributions for their employees.
I take the view that those concerns are legit imate. And we tried in our work here to be very ba lanced in our approach to ens ure that we are not causing undue stress on employers while, at the same
time, trying to be mindful that we want to promote a
culture of self -sufficiency. And so we are encouraging
people to provide for themselves in their later years
[by] saving during their years that they are actually
earning income. My views on this subject are informed by my
education. I have a couple of degrees, advanced degrees, in finance. I have worked as an investment
banker on Wall Street for a number of years in f inance, and I have also been an employee contributing
to a 401(k) plan or some sort of pension plan since
1988 —so 30 years of contributions. And I can tell you
that I have watched that money grow.
My views on this are also informed by the fact
that for the first 20 years of my professional life I lived
and worked in the United States and in the UK. And had I not been able to contribute, I would have had a
good 20 years of no contributions —not ideal. So today
I sit with a pension asset and a 401(k) plan that sits in
the United States. I can tell you whenever I open up
my Wells Fargo bank account on my phone, on the app, I see the balance in my 401(k) every single time I open the phone up. The numbers are growing nicely.
And it will certainly help when I decide, sometime
much later in my life, to retire.
I take the view that we are trying to . . .
whether a person is born here or remains here after
they are working, we should be encouraging people to
plan for their retirements, irrespective of where they
come from or where they are going. And I do not think
that we should be making a distinction between those
persons who plan on being here permanently or not.
We want to encourage people to prepare for their r etirement and to be able to sustain themselves accor dingly.
Just for the record, most guest workers on
Island today currently participate in plans. Most of them take part in 401(k) plans inasmuch as they are
guest workers who are going to be leaving at some
point in the future. And those who work for Bermudian
companies who are staying for whatever reason are
part of defined contribution plans or defined benefit plans that already exist in the Island. And the legisl ation that we are proposing today, putting forward t oday, is a natural evolution of the regime.
What we ar e seeing here is a modernisation
of the legislation. There was a point in time when ves ting requirements were 10 years and then they de-volved to five years and now to one [year]. And I think
it is also reflective of what employers are seeing, but also, the character of our employees. Many millennials will not behave in the way similar to how our
grandparents behaved. Our grandparents got a job at
an organisation and they worked at the same organisation for the entirety of their careers. We all know
that mos t millennials, if they spend a year or 18
months at a job, that is probably a long time.
And so, this legislation and the amendments
that we are proposing certainly go a long way to ensuring that this generation of young people, who may
not be as materialistic as their predecessors, are also
saving for their eventual retirements.
There was some commentary around the burden of administrative costs on administrators and on
2636 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly pension recipients and employers. I can tell you that
the pension administration industry is one that has
grown substantially over the course of the last two
decades. The growth has been aided, largely, by the
introduction of technology in helping to prepare and advise members and employers on the performance
of the assets that sit inside of individual pension
funds. And so I do not foresee there being a substantial incremental administrative cost or burden on plans
or plan members or employers for these amendments
that we are making here today.
One of the Honourable Members talked about
enforcement. And I could not agree with him more.
But, in addition to enforcement, I also think that we
need to do a better job. And I think “we” being em-ployers, “we” being the commission, and “we” also
being administrators, need to do a better job of enlightening, teaching, promoting knowledge around
pensions for our population. Most people are afraid of
concepts that are related to finance because it seems
very fuzzy and it can be a bit daunting—the use of all kinds of big finance words.
I had a person c ome into my office a week
and a half ago because her daughter has a daughter
in school in the [United] States, and she was trying to
tap into her pension fund to fund next semester’s tuition, only to find out that her employer had not been making contribut ions for the last five to eight years.
Now, I had a reaction on hearing that news, but I also
asked a question, How could she not know that her contributions were not being made for the last five to
eight years? Because the individual also has a r esponsibi lity to kind of know what is going on with their
pensions.
As I said before, I can open up my phone and
I can look at my balance at Wells Fargo right now.
And I am going to commit today to work with the
commission and some of the local media to do an
awar eness campaign where people should know that
they are entitled to receive a statement every month. Most administrators have websites or portals that a llow members to go in and gain access to find their
statement at any point in time. I know that my former employer has that facility and I quarterly check . . .
actually, I get an email from BF&M, the administrator of my plan here in Bermuda, every quarter advising me that my statement is ready. I take the time to go
and print it out . . . actually, I do not print it out an ymore. I look at it on screen and then I save a PDF file
to the folder so that when I decide to join the feat hered chorus my wife knows where to find the money, because it actually is for her.
With respect to kind of beneficiary designations, I think one of the Members talked about kind of
what happens if you have a second marriage and you pass on and what does your surviving spouse need to do. Most defined contribution plans give an opportunity to fill out a beneficiary designation form where you
set out how you would like for your pension assets to be distributed once you have passed on. And so, I
would encourage, I think as part of this awareness
campaign, that people are made aware of how their
proceeds are distributed once they have kind o f
moved on.
I think I spoke to the issue of vesting periods
and I have also . . . one other issue was about imposing an additional burden on international business.
That is not actually the case. What we learned in our
consultation with ABIR (and that cons ultation happened fairly late in the process) was that ERISA is a
fairly robust and time- tested regime. And inasmuch as
plans are compliant with ERISA there should not be a
need for them to also come under the scrutiny of the
Bermuda Pension Commission. An d so, in the spirit of
kind of being adaptable and reasonable, the Pension Commission is quite fine in relying on ERISA’s over-sight of US tax plans.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I move that the Bill be
committed.

Members, we are now in the Commi ttee of the whole House for further consideration of the
Bill entitled National Pension S cheme (Occupational
Pensions) Amendment Act 2019 .
Minister, you have the floor.

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, this Bill seeks to amend the
National Pension Scheme (Occupational Pensions)
Act 1998.
Mr. Chairman, initi ally, I would like to move
clause 1.

One second, Minister.
Has everybody got the amendment? Do you
have the amendment, Mr. Pearman?
Okay.
Continue.

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: —amended to clarify that
the term applies to trustees or boards of trustees who
act as administrators of pension plans. The definition of “pensionable earnings” is amended to include all
payments of bonuses. The definition of “employee” has been repealed and replaced so that the Act applies to all employees, whether Bermudian or nonBermudian. This definition is being further amended,
Mr. Chairman, and I will explain.

Mm-hmm.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: The definition of “self -
employed person” has been amended so that the Act applies to any person who is s elf-employed, whether
Bermudian or non- Bermudian. The definition of “Bermudian” has been repealed as that term is no longer
applicable. Amendments have also been made to the
definitions of “actuary” and “retirement period.”

AMENDMENT TO CLAUSE 2

Hon. Cur tis L. Dickinson: The clause 2 amendment,
Mr. Chairman, I propose that in clause 2(c) we delete
the definition of “employee” and substitute the follo wing:
“‘employee’ means a person who is employed
in Bermuda by an employer; but does not include a person who has been granted permission under the
Bermuda Immigration and Protection Act 1956 to e ngage in gainful occupation in Bermuda unless that
person has been granted such permission for an aggregate period exceeding twelve months;”.

Mm-hmm.

NEW CLAUSE 2A

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Mr. Chairman, I also pr opose to add a new clause. This amendment is to address the issue that I mentioned in my brief brought
forward by ABIR. Mr. Chairman, I propose the following: A new
clause 2A:
“After clause 2, insert the following new
clause—“Amends section 3” (restrictions on applic ation of Act)
“2A Section 3 of the principal Act, is amended
by inserting the following after subsection (1A) —
“(1B) This Act does not require a pension plan
be provided in res pect of employment or service in
Bermuda by a citizen of the United States [of Amer ica]—
(a) who has permission under the Ber-muda Immigration and Protection Act
1956 to engage in gainful occupation in
Bermuda; and
(b) who participates in a pension plan qualified under what is commonly known
as section 401(k) of the United States I nternal Revenue Code.
“(1C) An employer who has established a section 401(k) pension plan in respect of an employee referred to in subsection (1B) may register the plan with the C ommission in accordance with section 5.”

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So, a couple of questions arising just from
clauses 2 and 2A, and if I put both questions at the
same time that might be easiest.
The first is that there was a revised version of
the Bill kindly shared with the Opposition on Wednes-day afternoon, so that is where the Government’s
thinking was only a day and a half ago. And at that
time the aggregate period before the pension r equirement kicked in was 24 months (2 years). And
that is now being changed by floor amendment to 12 months (1 year). So, could we please invite the Government or the Minister to explain why there has been
a last -minute amendment?
And my second question in relation to these
two clauses (if I may put them both together, Mr.
Chairman), is this concept of “aggregate period.” Now, let us take 12 months, which is the amending period.
If a worker, say, comes down to work on the BELCO
project as a foreign worker, he is here for six months,
goes back to wherever that specialist worker comes
from, two years later, three years later, comes down
to Morgan’s Point to do some electrical work, he is here for six months. On a normal reading of the word
“aggregate” one would expect that to be an aggregate
period of 12 months. So, here is someone who has
only been in Bermuda twice over three or four years
for six months a pop each [time], is that person going
to have an obligatory pension or not?
Those are the two questions, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
2638 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly The Chairman: Minister?

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: With respect to the first
question around the change from 24 months to 12, the
intention . . . the reason behind the change from 24 to
12 months is to align the legislation with the provisions
of temporary or short -term work permits.
With respect to the aggregation question, they
need to work for 12 full months before . . . and this is
12 full months in one go.

[Crosstalk]

Hon. Curtis L. D ickinson: So, the answer . . . sorry,
Mr. Chairman, is they will need to work 12 months in
aggregate. So there is an aggregation feature to this.
But the employee would still need, to qualify, an additional four or five months of employment. And there
are time requirements in terms of hours of service and
time of service.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was
just going to follow up on that answer.
So, the example that I gave of someone who
is here for six months, or if it makes it better, six
months and a day, and then is gone for three or four
years and is back for six months and a day (just so we
know we are over 12 months), is that a qualifying obl igation or not a qualifying obligation in my example?
I would think it is not as a matter of common
sense; but I think it is as a reading of the language strictly.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

No problem, you can wait. Kind of
you.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I can clarify. There is an aggregation prov ision. If an employee comes here and works for six
months and then leaves and then comes back and
works for six months and a day, effective the day he is then eligible to participate, or required to participate, in
the pension scheme. But there are other provisions that also need to be met. The person must be over 23
years of age and must have worked 720 hours in a
calendar year.

In regard to the amendment
[New clause 2A,] (1B), making exemption for pensions
qualified under the 401(k) in the US, will the Minister give an undertaking to ensure that other pension
schemes that are recognised by federal governments,
such as the UK and Canada, will be included at some
point in the future so that can apply to Canadian and
UK nationals working here?
In addition, Mr. Chairman—

The section . . . I am going to
something else now in that area [clause] 2(a) . . .
would I be correct in saying the “administrator” can
also include corporate administrators?
And in regard to 2(f) can the Minister give us
some criteria that is used by the Commission in rec-ognising actuarial qualifications in other jurisdictions?
Given that we have many actuaries in Bermuda, some are from South Africa, some are from the West Indies,
can he speak to what qualifications will be used and
what criteria will be used to ensure that these actuarial
designations will meet the standard as required in Bermuda? Because I see the Canadians are approved and the Americas, and the UK. But we are getting more and more professionals from other overseas
jurisdictions and they may have actuarial designations
and they need to be recognised and the criterion for their approval needs to be defined.
Thank you.

Minister.

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
With respect to the Member’s first question
about recognising the UK and Canada, giving an u ndertaking. The answer to that is I am not prepared to
give an undertaking. There are some specific, unique
characteristics with the United States’ plans. Emplo yees who are US persons are actually afforded a tax
benefit because of the worldwide nature of the US tax
regime. That same treatment is not afforded to Can adian citizens or UK persons who opt to work in Bermuda.
The question in respect to 2[(a)], corporate
administrators, the answer to that one is yes.
And with respect to the various qualifications
of actuaries from different parts of the world, I am advised that these persons must be a member in good
standing of a recognised actuarial body, whether it be


Bermuda House of Assembly in the US, the UK, Canada or the Caribbean. And I am
sure it probably extends to parts of Africa as well.

Any further speakers?
The Chair recognises the Honourable Jeanne
Atherden.

Hon. Jeanne J. Atherden: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
With respect to clause 2, I am goi ng to ask the
question again because my mind just foresees a problem and I just want to clarify it.
If you say that . . . using the example, som eone could be down here . . . and I am going to make it
even more extreme. Someone is down here for four months and then six months and then two months
over the period and it comes up to more than 12
months. I guess my question is, the way you responded in indicating that this would accumulate an aggr egate [of] more than 12 months, I guess my question
then would be: Who is going to pay the pension money for that period, especially if it was more than one employer?
So, I just want some clarity in terms of . . . I
could understand you saying that if a person came
down and they were going to be here for 12 months
and a day, and then you are going to say that you
have to take the money out and put it into a pension
scheme. But if you are going to have periods which
are less than 12 months and periods [where there]
could be [different] employers, I can just . . . I just do
not understand how an administrator could (1) keep
track of that, and (2) which administrator is going to be on the hook.

Minister?

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Mr. Chairman, I will repeat
the prior answer that I gave.
There is a one- year requirement. And I have
answered that the time that a person spends on the
Island can be aggregated. And then there is another
requirement with respect to an age requirement of the
affected employee, and also the hours that this person has actually worked. Who is responsible for collecting
information on the time spent? There will be records at the Department of Immigration around this person’s coming and going and presumably we will have to
provide some information around whether this person
has met the requirement around the one- year period.
And then we look at the other two qualifying criteria to kind of see if they are of age and have worked the
required minimum hours.

Continue.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Clause 3 amends section
4 (Obligation of employers to establish and maintain
pension plans). The amendment requires an employer
to apply to register a pension plan within 90 days (not
less than 120 days) of establishing the plan, and the
reference to the prescribed form has been deleted.
Clause 4 amends section 5 (Applications for
registration) by deleting the reference to a prescribed
form.
Clause 5 amends section 7 (General responsibilities of administrator) to remove the requirement
of an administrator of a defined contribution pension plan to submit triennial reports of the pension fund to
the Commission, and to delete the reference to a pr escribed form.
Clause 6 amends section 8 (Duty of employer
to provide information to administrator) to provide for
the Minister to prescribe the manner and length of
time within which an employer must keep records r elating to the pension plan and each employee.
2640 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Clause 7 amends section 11 (Amendment of
pension plan and registration of amendments). A new
subsection (1B) has been inserted relating to the r efund of contributions made before section 11 came into operation. Subsection (4) now provides for amendments to a pension plan to take effect upon
registration (not the day on which the application for
registration is filed ).
Clause 8 amends section 12 (Power of Commission to refuse to register or to cancel registration,
et cetera) to refer to pension plans in the section heading.
Clause 9 amends section 14 (Annual stat ement of pension benefits) by providing for annual state ments to be sent to members by electronic
means.
Clause 10 amends section 16 (Access to
documents in custody of administrator) to include trustees who hold the assets of a pension plan as a person who may make a request to the administrator to
inspect documents and information relating to the pension plan.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My question relates to clause 3, and this is the
registration period. So , this really does not have an ything to do with the other changes to the Bill; all it is
doing is making the registration period more onerous
by bringing it from six months down to three months (although it is expressed in days at clause 3). Why are
we mak ing it more difficult for businesses to comply
with red tape rather than leaving it as it is or, indeed,
making it less difficult?

It reads “in paragraph (a) by
deleting ‘in the form prescribed by regulations’ and substituting ‘on the form provided by the Commi ssion.’”
My question is, is there a difference in the
manner in which the forms are to be submitted in r egard to the regu lations and in regard to what the
Commission wants? Are the requirements the same or are they different? Why the change?
The next one . . . [clause] 6(c)(1), [amending]
section 8, “An employer shall retain records in the
manner and within such time limits as may be pr escribed.” How long will the records be retained for? And
who will prescribe the length of retention?

Minister.

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Mr. Chairman, in response
to the first question with respect to the reduction in the period of time required to register a plan, the six -
month period was in the original legislation from over
20 years ago. Pension plans are now a regular feature
in the compensation of employees and employers in Bermuda. One would have to believe that over the
course of 20 years we have managed to streamline,
perfect and understand how to fill out these forms. So
the notion that we now cannot consider compressing
that time and referring to it as imposing red tape
when, in actual fact, the registration of plans is inten ded as a protection for employees, I find somewhat
confusing, but that is where we are. So, we have
shrunk the period from six months to three months
because people should know how to fill out the forms.

As we know, the annual r eports have to be filed in a specified format. And he is
changing the format from a format prescribed by the regulations to a format prescribed by the Commission.
And my question is, is there a difference in the format? And if there is a difference, what are the differences and why are they going from the regulations to
the Commission? Surely, in my mind, the format
should be the same in both entities.

Continue.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Clause 11 amends section
17 (Eligibility for membership) by providing for an employee to be eligible for membership in a pension plan if he has attained the age of 23 years but has not attained the normal retirement age.
Clause 12 inserts Part IIA (Approval of Trustees) which requires persons to apply to the Commi ssion for approval as a trustee.
Clause 13 amends section 18 (Funding) to
require assets of a pension plan to be held by an ap-proved trustee.
Clause 14 amends section 19 (Contributions).
Subsection (1)(b) has been amended with respect to multi- employer pension plans. Subsection (6) is
amended to require administrators and persons who
hold the assets of a pension plan in a pension fund to
notify the employer and the Commission within 15
days (not immediately) of an employer failing to make
the required contribution into the pension fund. New
subsections (6A) and (6B) have been inserted to r equire inter est to be paid by an employer on unpaid
contributions at the rate prescribed by the Minister by
notice published in the Gazette.
Clause 15 amends section 19A (Civil pr oceed ings) to provide for interest owed on unpaid contributions to be recoverable as a ci vil debt.
Clause 16 amends section 21 (Early retir ement) to provide for a person who has retired to elect
to receive an early retirement pension, provided he is
within 10 years of attaining the normal retirement
date.
Clause 17 amends section 22 (Vesting) to require pension plans to provide for the full vesting of
accrued benefits in each of its members within a per iod not exceeding one year (not two years), and for the
Commission to approve a full vesting period other
than one year in respect of multi -empl oyer pension
plans.
Clause 18 amends section 23 (Portability) to
provide for section 23 not to apply where a pension
plan provides for an employee, who has terminated his employment to remain a member of the emplo yer’s pension plan, and the member has elec ted to do
so; and for the administrator of a pension plan to
comply with a member’s directions within 45 days (not
30 days) of delivery of the direction.

Clause 11, can the Minister
provide a live example for the amendment? I read it and I am not clear, in my mind, as to what is going on
here in this amendment. It says an employee must
have reached an age of 23 years but has not attained
the normal retirement age. I just do not understand
what the message is. Can you give us a live example
please?

[Clause] 19, continue.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickin son: Clause 19 amends section
24 (Restrictions on refunds) by providing for a lump
sum refund to members or former members of a pension plan who have attained retirement age or who
have retired, and for the Minister to prescribe regul ations in this regard.

AMENDMENT TO CLAUSE 19

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: I propose to amend clause
19 as follows:
In clause 19(b), in the new paragraph (b), delete the words “terminated his employment” and sub-stitute “retired.”

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Minister, I just really had a question around
that change in the definition. Given that in the primary
Act the terminology “terminated” and “termination of
employment” is a defined term, and you are substituting it with “retired,” which is, unless I am mistaken, not
a defined term. And I just was not sure why you were
making a change from something that is quite clear
and defined under the Act to a word that . . . I appr eciate we understand the vernacular, but it is not a defined term in the Act.

Any further speakers?
Minister.

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Mr. Chairman, I am advised that the proposed change here is intended to be a clarifying change. And there are instances when
persons have been retired but still . . . have retired
and be eligible to receive their 25 per cent lump sum.
And in order to do that you must be a retired person.

Continue.

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Clause 20 amends section
28 (Exceptions to general restrictions) to refer to court
ordered property settlement agreements.
Clause 21 amends section 31 (Survivor benefits on death before pension commences) by providing
for a lump sum to be paid to the beneficiary of a member of a pension plan, where the member dies
before completing one year (not two years) membership in the pension plan.
Clause 22 amends section 34 (Variation of
payment to disabled persons) t o permit variation in the
terms of payment of a pension or other benefit where
the opinion of a qualified medical practitioner is that
the life expectancy of the member or former member
is likely reduced to five years or less.
Clause 23 repeals and replaces section 35
(Small pensions) which now provides for small pension plans to provide for payment to a former member who has attained normal retirement age and who has
retired, if the commuted value or the account balance
is not more than $50,000.
Clause 24 makes an editorial amendment to
section 38 (Winding up).
Clause 25 amends section 40 (Report on
winding up) by providing for the payment of an appl ication fee when a winding -up report is submitted for
the Commission’s approval.
Clause 26 amends section 46 (Surplus) to
clarify that surplus in a fund that has been wound up
is not to be paid out without the consent of the Com-mission.


Bermuda House of Assembly Clause 27 amends section 47 (Continuation of
benefits under successor employer) to refer to the
assets of a business where there is a merger or amalgamation; and with respect to the transfer of a me mber’s account balance to a successor employer’s pen-sion plan.

Continue.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Clause 28 amends section
49 (Orders by Commission) to provide for the Commission to make an order with respect to a person
dealing with a local ret irement product.
Clause 29 amends section 50 (Advice by
Commission as to conformity) to provide for the
Commission to advise whether a local retirement
product conforms with the requirements of the princ ipal Act or the regulations.
Clause 30 amends section 51 (Hearing in certain cases) by providing for persons to be heard by the Commission when the Commission proposes to
refuse to approve or revoke the approval of a person
as a trustee, or to impose a civil penalty.
Clause 31 amends section 52 (Appeals to
Supreme Court) by providing for persons to appeal to
the Supreme Court against a decision of the Commi ssion to refuse or revoke the approval of a trustee, or to
impose a civil penalty or the amount of the penalty.
Clause 32 amends section 56 (Functions of
the Commission) to provide for the Commission to
determine applications for approval as trustees.
Clause 33 amends section 61 (Power to order
information and reports) by providing for the Commi ssion to order information for statistical and research purposes , and also to order information from persons
dealing with a pension plan, local retirement product,
or a pension fund.
Clause 34 amends section 66 (Extension of
time) to provide for an application fee to be payable in respect of an application for extensio n of time.

Okay, continue.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Clause 35 amends section
67 (Offences, penalties and orders for payment) by
providing for the Commission to take into account
whether or not Guidance Notes issued by the Com-mission had been followed when determining if a person had contravened the principal Act, Regulations, or
an order.

AMENDMENT TO CLAUSE 35

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: It is proposed to amend
clause 35 as follows:
In clause 35(a), delete the words “subsection
(1)” and substitute “subsections (1) and (2).”

Continue.

2644 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Clause 36 inserts section
68A (Commission may impose civil penalties). The
amendment provides: (a) for the Commission to i mpose a civil penalty where a person is liable to pros ecution for an offence under section 67; (b) for the
range of penalties that may be imposed; (c) for penalties to be recovered as a civil debt; (d) for penalties to
be payable to the Commission; and (e) for the Commission not to impose a civil penalty where a person
has been charged with an offence in respect of the
same matter.
Clause 37 amends section 69 (Regulations)
by providing for regulations to be made prescribing
actuarial standards, maximum fees payable for services rendered to a pension plan, pension fund, or life annuity contract, and admi nistrative fees to be pay able to the Commission.
Clause 38 inserts section 69A (Guidance
Notes) which provides for the Commission to issue
Guidance Notes to promote best practices and compliance with the Act and the Regulations by emplo yers, administrators , and other persons dealing with a
pension plan, local retirement product, or a pension fund. Such persons must have regard to the Guidance
notes in the performance of their duties, but failure to
comply with Guidance Notes is not an offence. The
Statutory Instruments Act 1977 does not apply to
Guidance Notes.
Clause 39 makes a related amendment to
section 72 (Application of Pension Trust Funds Act
1966).
Clause 40 provides for consequential
amendments to the National Pension Scheme (General) Regulations 1999 as set out in Schedule 1 to this
Act. These include amendments in relation to: (a) the
definitions of local and overseas retirement products;
(b) applications for approval as a trustee, and as a
person who may issue annuity contracts; (c) fees in
respec t of applications for proof of participation in a
financial institution pension plan, notices of registr ation, and applications for approval of a transfer report;
(d) the value of the assets of a pension plan which
require an auditor’s report, and the basi s of accounting for preparing financial statements; (e) annual a dministrative fees; (f) the amount of contributions to be
made by self -employed persons to a self -employment
pension plan; (g) multi -employer pension plans;
(h) the revocation of the First Schedule (Forms); and
(i) the Second Schedule (Fees) is revoked and r eplaced by the Schedule to this Act entitled “Second
Schedule—Fees”.
Clause 41 provides for related amendments to
the National Pension Scheme (Financial Hardship)
Regulations 2010 as set out in Schedule 2 to this Act.
Among other things, the amendments provide for
payment of eligible funeral expenses, payments to be made directly to the landlord of a person receiving
educational benefits, and for persons who have at-tained the normal retirement age and have retired not
to pay the application fee.
Clause 42 inserts a Third Schedule entitled
“Minimum Criteria for Approval as a Trustee.”

Thank you, Mr. Cha irman.
Minister, clause 36 inserts section 68A which
provides for the Commission, which is a quasi -
government quango, to impose civil penalties. Most
other legislation, indeed, all other legislation I can
think of off the top of my head in Bermuda where i t
imposes civil penalties, allows for the right of appeal
to the Supreme Court. I suspect that this was intended
here, but I do not seem to see that it is included. I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that
that is certainly the case and it wi ll be included in the
final Act.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Any further . . .
Minister.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Mr. Chairman, I would r efer the Honourable Member to clause 31, which reads:
Clause 31 amends section 52 (Appeals to
Supreme C ourt) by providing for persons to appeal to
the Supreme Court against a decision of the Commi ssion to refuse or revoke the approval of a trustee, or to
impose a civil penalty or the amount of the penalty.

Continue.
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Clause 43 provides a savings and transitional provision on the day this Act


Bermuda House of Assembly comes into operation with respect to: (a) trustees;
(b) interest payable by employers on unpaid contributions; (c) persons employed under the Bermuda I mmigration and Protection Act 1956; and (d) pension
plans, financial institution pension plans, and local
retirement products.

AMENDMENT TO CLAUSE 43

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: It is proposed to amend
clause 43 as follows:
In clause 43(5)(a), delete the words “a period
of 24 months or less” and substitute “an aggregate period exceeding twelve months.”

Yes, you can move Schedules 2 and
3.

Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Mr. Chairman, I move
Schedules 2 and 3 and the Second Schedule.

2646 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly The Chairman: It has been moved that Schedules 2
and 3 and the Second Schedule be approved.
Any objections?
There appear to be none.
Approved.

[Motion carried: Schedules 2 and 3 and the Second Schedule passed.]


Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Mr. Chairman, I al so move
the Third Schedule.

It has been moved that the Bill be
reported to the House as amended.
Are there any objections to that?
There appear to be none.
The Bill will be reported to the House as
amended.
[Motion carried: The National Pension Scheme (O ccupational Pensions) Amendment Act 2019 was co nsidered by a Committee of the whole House and passed with amendments.]

House resumed at 3:58 pm
[Hon. Dennis P. Lister, Jr., Speaker, in the Chair]

REPORT OF COMMITTEE
NATIONAL PENSION SCHEME (OCCUPATIONAL
PENSIONS) AMENDMENT ACT 2019

Members, are there any objections to
the National Pension Scheme (Occupational Pe nsions) Amendment Act 2019 being reported to the
House as amended?
There are none. It has, and that brings that
item to a close.
The next item on the Order Paper for discussion today is [Order] No. 4. Am I correct? [Order] No.
4 [is] a motion in the name of the Honourabl e Minister
Furbert, [notice of] which was given on the 1st of November.
Minister, would you like to state your Motion
and begin?

MOTION

THAT THIS HONOURABLE HOUSE TAKE NOTE
OF THE FUTURE STATE REPORT
DATED AUGUST 23, 2019 BY BERMUDAFIRST

Hon. Wayne L. Furbert: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now
take under consideration the following motion, notice
of which was given on the 1st of November 2019:
That this Honourable House take note of the
Future State Report dated August 23, 2019 by BermudaFirst.

Any objections?
No objections.
Continue on, Minister.

Hon. Wayne L. Furbert: Mr. Speaker, I stand today to
speak on the BermudaFirst report.
You are well aware that the Progressive Labour Party stated in its platform: “In order for Bermuda
to succeed, we need to return our economy to a path of balanced growth that creates jobs, provides rising
incomes and assists our budget challenges. It is our
belief that a better environment must be created in
which Bermudian bus inesses can thrive, opportunities
for Bermudians can be created, and in which capable,
qualified Bermudians can earn opportunities to work,
train and succeed at every level. We will ensure a
fairer Bermuda for all by enacting policies to grow
Bermuda’s economy.”
Mr. Speaker, it was with this backdrop that the
Progressive Labour Party promised to form a Berm udaFirst Advisory Group consisting of local and intern ational businessmen and community leaders to develop
a long- term economic and social plan for Bermuda.
Bermuda needs to draw on the intellectual capital of our stakeholders to get all sections of our community moving in the same direction. An economic plan that
has broad community support, which will assist us in
creating balanced long- term economic growth, that


Bermuda House of Assembly will create jobs in Bermuda. The party promised to do
this within its first 100 days. Upon winning a majority
on July 18, 2017 and the reconvening of Parliament
on September 8, 2017 the Government got to work and within 48 days thereafter the Premier, the Ho nourable David Burt, on October 26
th announced the
BermudaFirst group.
Mr. Speaker, the country is indebted to the
many individuals who worked tirelessly on this report. I will not be able to mention everyone as there were several working groups, but I think it is important that I
mention at least a few members and officers. Leading
the team was: Mr. Phil Butterfield as Chairman; Andy
Burrows; the president of the BIU Chris Furbert; Chris
Maiat o; Colin Hom an; Carol Lindo; Darren Johnston;
Deputy Chairman; Dr. Duranda Greene who is the
CEO president of Bermuda College; Gil Tucker,
Treasurer; Gita Blakeney -Saltus; John Johnston; John
Wight, Deputy Chairman; Lori Gilbert; Michael Branco;
Michael Collins; Michael Morrison; Michelle Jackson;
Patrick T annock, Deputy Chairman; Rod AttrideStirling; Scott Pearman; Tammy Richardson; Wendy McLeod. The Government Liaison Officer was Travis
Gilbert; the Executive Director (who I believe is sitting
in the Gallery) Ms. Kerry Judd; Working Group Strat egist, Dr. Dawnelle Walker.
Mr. Speaker, the mandate of the Board was
“To develop a National Socio- Economic Plan for Bermuda including an Implementation Plan, which will
prioritise key action initiatives supported by the Government.”
Mr. Speaker, you will be well aware that BermudaFirst came together in February 2009 [and]
whose purpose was to better understand Bermuda’s overall economic position and to lay out ideas to e nsure [the] continued prosperity of Bermuda and all her
people for the years to come. It was formed originally
as a tri -partisan public/private partnership co- chaired
by former Premier Dr. Ewart Brown (and the leader of the Opposition at that time was the Honourable Kim Swan); the private sector CEO Mr. Don Kramer,
Chairman and CEO of ArielRe; supported at that time
by a selected committee of 22 and an advisory committee of 60- plus businessmen and community lea ders. That report was completed November 3, 2009.
Several recommendations came out of that
report, of which I will name a few:
Recommendation 5 was the International A rbitration Centre. Evaluate current international arbitr ation activity and assess the potential to establish an international arbitration centre to support the insurance and reinsurance sectors.
Recommendation 7, Value proposition. C onduct a comprehensive study on how to strengthen
Bermuda’s attractiveness to overnight leisure tourists.
Recommendation 10, Tourism authority. I nvestigate creating a public/private tourism authority
with ultimate public oversight. As you are aware, Mr.
Speaker, that one took hold. Recommendation 11, non- peak subsidies.
Subsidise more cultural activities and encourage h otels to offer long- term accommodation options in the
non-peak season.
Recommendation 13, at the time was, travel
subsidies. Continue to provide modest government
subsidies for tourism through customer vouchers or
airfare reductions.
Recommendation 16 was Bermuda Risk Inst itute. Create a risk institute to help establish Bermuda
as an internationally recognised knowledge centre for risk managem ent.
Recommendation 17, which has done very
well, Insurance- linked securities. Deepen Bermuda’s
primary market in insurance- linked securities.
Recommendation 20, at the time was, Res idency. Provide permanent residency for wealthy indi-viduals who create jobs in Bermuda. I believe that was
covered under the Job Makers Act.
Recommendation 23, scholarship management. Streamline scholarship management to better address skill needs and reduce the burden on [appl icants].
Recommendation 26, Public safety. Intensify
efforts to reduce crime and ensure public safety. And I am sure the Minister will speak as to where there has
been a significant reduction in crime, particularly when
it comes to violent crimes, guns and weapons.
[Recommendation 28,] Cost Study. Launch a
comprehensive study to review the high cost of living
and doing business, and identify potential areas to
reduce costs.
Mr. Speaker, these recommendations and
others were a good start. And, as you can see, some recommendations were taken up and some are st ill
being considered.
Mr. Speaker, then we jump ahead to 2019. As
was mentioned earlier, the BermudaFirst was invigorated. . . reinvigorated, sorry, with a new mandate: “To
develop a National Socio- Economic Plan for Bermuda
including an Implementation Plan, which will prioritise
key action initiatives supported by the Government.”
That was their mandate.
BermudaFirst set up working group strategies
and a working group. The Working Group included 80 -
plus participants from local community and business sectors . They looked at infrastructure, education, ec onomic diversification, health care, technology, socio-economic foundations, international business and hospitality and tourism.
Mr. Speaker, after months of work the Berm udaFirst completed its report with several recommen-dations.
Mr. Speaker, I want to emphasise that what I
will be going over are the recommendations that have been recommended by the report. The Ministers will
deal with some of these recommendations today . . .
or talk about them at least. Education, health care and
2648 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly immigration were three critical areas of focus by this
Committee.
Mr. Speaker, just to touch on a few of the recommendations, for education there was recommended the creation of an independent authority for public education that is r esponsible for the performance
management of educators and researching and i mplementing a holistic public education system that is appropriately sized/structured, resulting in a learning
environment that facilitates optimum student success.
Creating an independent authority for Workforce D evelopment and implementing the National Workforce
Development Plan.
Research and implement a public education
system that delivers the most appropriate
size/structure and learning environment to foster optimum student suc cess.
It was recommended that all principals must
be certified and demonstrate innovative thinking,
strong performance management skills, excellent i nstructional leadership skills and display the ability to
strategically optimise the fiscal, physical and h uman
resources at their schools.
All teachers must be internationally certified
from a list of institutions screened and approved by
the Department of Education and be subject matter
experts who participate in regular meaningful, ap-proved professional deve lopment.
Create a public school system where a minimum of 80 per cent of all local students graduate with
a high school diploma that meets internationally recognised academic or vocational qualifications.
Health Care. Health Care, I believe, had about
35 recommendations, approximately. It was recommended to have a holistic health care system that pr ioritises prevention, chronic disease management and
health care delivery via primary care, and restructures
the health system financing (including Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB)/hospital financing, and reformation
of the Standard Health Benefit (SHB).
Prioritise health care delivery via Primary
Care and restructure Health System financing . Deve lop a financial structure, supporting legislation and a
direct primary care reimbursement model that is a low -
cost solution to improve quality care to the 6,000 who are on Government subsidy. And, in addition, reduce the utilisation of acute care services. Incentivise ph ysicians for providing care to the 6,000 either by reducing or removing payroll tax.
Stabilise funding at Bermuda Hospitals Board
using a cap and collar funding model that guarantees
a minimum level of funding (collar) and maximum r etainable surplus (cap) supplied by the Ministry of F inance. Establish a Health Commissioning Unit (HCU)
within the Ministry of Finance that adjudicates that the pricing of health care services and payors to ensure long-term economic performance objectives are met.
Reforming SHB. Deconstruct SHB and r eplace it with a modernised reimbursement scheme. Make primary care the centre of health care and, in
doing so, develop a direct primary care model that is
vertically integrated from primary care providers to
BHB, then post -acute care providers. Revisit the pri cing model for overseas care, chronic disease management and prevention.
It talks about mandating health education and
policy that require all schools and colleges to educ ation students, teachers, and parents about the i mportance of physical, mental, social and emotional
health. Devel op health promotion and disease prevention strategies that improve the health of residents of
all stages of life. Encourage the Minister of Health to
develop a mental health strategy that increases the
awareness of emotional well -being through educ ational programmes. Provide residents with the skills
and resources to improve their own health, and that of family and friends.
Then it talks about Health Care Regulation. It
says, “ Delegate responsibility for the regulation of
physicians and medical practices to the BMC . Prescribe responsibility to the BHB for referrals to over-seas tertiary hospitals. Establish a Ministry of Finance
and key health care stakeholders -based HCU to adj udicate health system economic analysis, planning and commissioning of prices for providers and payors.”
Universal Coverage and Universal Access.
Provide universal access to effective care without u ndue financial burden. De- structure the Youth Subsidy
and the Claims Subsidy and introduce a needs -based
premium subsidy so that all legal residents can be insured for health care. In a system that legislates universal coverage, health insurers cannot exclude
based on pre- existing conditions. Need for more regulation and enforcement when local health care provi ders refer patients to providers o verseas. Currently,
providers on Island need to develop stronger relation-ships with patients and better advise them on avail able care based on their insurance coverage and i ncome. FutureCare should be responsible for overse eing the financing decisions of t he local providers to the
patient.
De-structure long- term care and decipher s ocial services that should be the responsibility of the
Ministry of Labour, Community and Sports versus medical care that should come under the Ministry of
Health. Keep elderly care close to home as opposed
to in a facility. However, be sure to modify current f acility structures and resources so they align to local
standards, are sustainable and improve the quality of
care. Review the alignment of Government rest -home
facilities an d the BHB to enhance patient flow of lower
acuity patients into lower cost step- down units.
It talks about technology, Mr. Speaker. It says,
“Adopt an integrated electronic health record that
tracks patient data and produces health metrics that
assist wit h decision -making for health care stakehol ders.”


Bermuda House of Assembly It talks about [the] Johns Hopkins Clinical Affi liation Agreement. Potential for physicians/specialists
from Johns Hopkins to fill any gaps in locally provided
service. This should be in collaboration with t he local
physicians, both hospital and community based, to
ensure quality is maintained, but equally to ensure
that Johns Hopkins does not become a competitor to
locally provided services. Modern practice contains an
element of peer review; Johns Hopkins’ affiliation pr ovides an opportunity to incorporate excellence in prac-tice via practitioners that can build familiarity with the jurisdiction but remain professionally independent.
Mr. Speaker, they speak also about Immigr ation. It was recommended to reform immigration to
enable job creation with appropriate protections . They
talked about employers should request and receive a
set number of work permits that are required to support the businesses. This annual request would be
reviewed semi -annually to ensure the efficacy of the
employer, the request must meet a reasonable test in
the relationship to prior existing work permits received and the organisation’s current business strategy. E mployers will be required to submit a plan for the career development of B ermudians throughout their organ isation, with emphasis on those positions for which
work permits have been used. Upward mobility for
positions of management responsibility, upward mobi lity for senior technical roles and care planning for C -
suite roles.
It talks about economic diversification. A container ship hub; develop a strategy that attracts local
and international ship owners to utilise Bermuda as a
hub for container ships with consideration given to construction of a commercial shipping port for suc h
work. This would also provide the opportunity to redevelop the existing Hamilton dock areas into an attractive waterfront amenity.
It speaks to renewal energy, Mr. Speaker. The
Bermuda Government to articulate the role of rene wable energy: solar, wind and wave energy; develop
legislation and any related incentives to encourage
utilisation and align to the overall National Energy
Plan.
Aqua -ocean culture. Work with government
departments and industry stakeholders to develop a strategy for an ocean/agricult ural culture, along with
developing the policies and processes to support it.
Vertical farming —you have heard the Premier
speak about that —fruits and vegetables. Develop a
holistic plan that incentivises providers and producers
that are farmers to develop sustainable alternatives to
traditional farming.
Superyachts. Enable legislation changes to
make Bermuda an attractive jurisdiction for chartering and registering superyachts with a parallel focus on
attracting races and other events.
An ocean economy. De velop a strategic plan
that will start to leverage the economic benefit of the ocean while protecting its health and its sustainability. Hospitality and tourism. Provide an enviro nment that supports revenue generation and cost eff iciencies for hotels and r estaurants. And support the
implementation of Bermuda Tourism Authority’s N ational Tourism Plan.
It talks about international business, Mr.
Speaker, and there are recommendations in there as
far as reducing the cost of doing business in Berm uda. The high c osts associated with doing business in
Bermuda are a deterrent for many companies looking
to relocate here. Bermuda shall commit to becoming a more cost -competitive jurisdiction. To help with this
the report says we have identified a number of initi atives and incentives that can help with that. For example, incentivise packages for new businesses, incub ator programmes for new start -ups, fee holidays, r educe Internet and electricity costs among others. This will drive an increase in new business registrations
leading to more employment opportunities. Undertake
deliberate and direct effort to promote Bermuda as a
domicile.
Current external threats and an increase in j urisdictional competition create vulnerability for Berm uda. It says, therefore, we must focus our deliberate
and direct effort on the efficacy of Bermuda as the
offshore platform of choice by creating a targeted
campaign for new business through the use of con-sistent road shows in targeted locations, a network of influential Bermudians overseas, and marketing campaigns delivering clear and cohesive messages about
the Bermuda brand.
Mr. Speaker, in regard to technology, the
Committee says [to] develop Bermuda as a regulatory
technology hub. It says implement strategies to build
and market Bermuda’s r egulatory reputation and v elocity to attract technology innovation from established
and emerging companies. Focus on the quality and
efficiency of Bermuda’s regulatory environment. Pos ition Bermuda as a viable jurisdiction to undertake
proof of concept ini tiatives. Develop technology -
centred incentives to attract existing and emerging
technology companies. And review and update the
existing business development product offering.
Mr. Speaker, they also break it down to b etween what they consider "Quick Win R ecommendations and also High Priority Recommendations.
In regard to the Quick Win Recommendations,
they are talking about economic diversification.
Commercial real estate: Government should
liberalise the ownership restrictions over commercial real estate to promote an environment that encourages a positive response to the EU's substance r equirements and provides opportunity for revitalisation
of certain areas in need of urban renewal, initially
concentrating on the City of Hamilton, but being avai lable for other areas.
It talks about implementing a local communication strategy highlighting the importance/benefits of
tourism. I am sure the Minister is doing that. Eliminate
2650 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly yearly re -licensing for hotels. Modernise the liquor
licensing process. Eliminate the moratorium on electric rental vehicles. Allow hotels to have a mini -bus
licence.
When it comes to infrastructure they say, “A llow the importation of second- hand electric cars that
meet all local standards. Remove the moratorium on
electric rental cars (which was mentioned earlier).
Consider goal -oriented legislation regarding the trans ition to electric cars and bikes imported.” So, in other words, we say that by 2030 we all have all electric cars and all bikes, that is what they were suggesting
here—bikes and cars. Replace Government vehicles,
when they age, with electric vehicles, where applic able. Enact and enforce emission standards legislation.
Maintain the hazardous waste budget without making
further cuts. Eliminate current inefficiencies in the potable water system and increase reserves.
Mr. Speaker, it talks about strengthening
community support systems through assessment and amalgamation of charities, ultimately strengthening the charities and their offerings. Provide affordable
housing for at -risk populations, low - and middleincome families. Institute a transportation system, i nclusive of public and private sector solutions, that
meets the current and future needs of the country.
Develop a holistic, strategic approach to amending the existing 60/40 legislation to encourage more foreign
investment/fresh capital into Bermuda’s economy. This should include appropriate consideration of i mmigration matters and the establishment of acceptable
thresholds to ensure that Bermudian entrepreneurs
are not subject to unfair levels of competition.
Mr. Speaker, as you can see, there were
many recommendations. Some I have not mentioned
because I am sure the Ministers would like to speak
further on these ones. The BermudaFirst group has
done their work. It is now ti me for us to study their
recommendations closer and take action. Some rec-ommendations will be able to be done in short order,
others over medium - and long- term, and some the
Government will take a further look at.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Premier,
the Honourable David Burt, JP, MP for having the foresight to have the BermudaFirst reconvene to pr oduce a report to obtain objective and external advice.
Mr. Speaker, I will now take my seat and allow
others to participate.
Thank you.

The Speake r: Thank you, Minister.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
I recognise the Honourable Member Moniz.
Honourable Member, you have the floor.
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
Speaker.
I listened with great interest to the Minister’s
comm ents here with respect to the report and he read out a substantial portion of the Future State Report. And I presume that those sections he read out were
the ones that the Government particularly agrees with.
It was not entirely clear to me—and I do not th ink it
will be entirely clear to —

Hon. Wayne L. Furbert: Just a point of order, Mr.
Speaker, just to clarify.

I will take your point of order.

POINT OF CLARIFICATION

Hon. Wayne L. Furbert: Mr. Speaker, I did mention
that these are recommen dations by the Committee,
not necessarily has the Government accepted all of
them.

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: And that is the point I want to
make. I assume that . . . well, what the Minister is sa ying is that it is not clear which ones were accepted
and which ones are not accepted so that there will be
further consideration of the recommendations by Cabinet and by the Government as a whole.
But I am presuming that he read out the ones
that at least he thinks are solid ones, they were not random ones or —

[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Yes, you can just . . .

Hon. Wayne L. Furbert: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I
would like to just clarify it for the Honourable Member.
I said I was reading the recommendations from the
Committee. The Government sti ll has to take a look
and decide which ones they will be doing.

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Right. You did not read all of
them; you just read out some of them.

Hon. Wayne L. Furbert: That is right.

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: So, it is highlights then?

Hon. Wayn e L. Furbert: Right.

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Okay. I am just trying to be
clear on that, Mr. Speaker, and I apologise.

Continue on.
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: This report is very interesting.
And I note what the Minister said with respect to this
Committee goes back a long way —to 2009, I believe,
he said. And this is a sort of second go round with further recommendations, which we are all happy to see.


Bermuda House of Assembly And it raises in this report a number of very
fundamental challenges which this community faces .
You know, it faces in particular —and we hear about it
again and again—the problem we have with an ageing population. We have a seriously ageing population and that is providing a big problem for us, you know,
in the school system and in the community, et cetera.
There are a number of other problems. I am
going to go through the report and just highlight some of the items which I think are important for us to look
at.
Now on page 2 of the report it speaks to that
issue of the ageing population, and it s peaks to tec hnological change and it speaks to inequalities (pr esumably they are talking about economic inequalities) across the community. But at the bottom of that page
2 it talks about “tribalism,” Mr. Speaker, and they talk
about the behaviour and atti tudes that stem from
strong loyalty to one’s own social group is, in our view,
the most troubling global trend, as it can have a de vastating impact on the social fabric of our community.
It is in any form, be it religion, politics, status, class or
race, t he antithesis to meaningful collaboration. In a
location as small as Bermuda, segmenting into the
haves and have nots; choosing ‘me’ instead of ‘we’;
allowing issues that are relatively inconsequential to
dominate our discourse while the consequential chal-lenges inhabit the recesses of our consciousness, is
not a pathway to sustainable success. To solve our
challenges, we need respectful dialogue, patient li stening skills, an ability to disagree without being dis agreeable and all shoulders to the wheel. How we work
together, respect one another and share common ex-pectations for our well -being will, in our view, be true
indicators for success.
Now, my concern about this, Mr. Speaker, is
very recently when the Premier invited the public to attend the delegates conference of the PLP, in that
speech where he spoke . . . he spoke of ‘family’ being
those people who are members of the PLP and he spoke of ‘enemies.’ Now, my submission, Mr. Speaker, is that this is naked tribalism in a very basic form. It
is an ‘us’ and ‘them’ approach that the BermudaFirst Group is specifically saying must be avoided in this
community if we are going to swim rather than sink.
And they are saying in this report, basically, that triba lism is a way that we will sink together rather than
swim and survive in this very competitive international
environment in which we have to compete.
The report goes on to speak about things like
climate change, which is a great challenge to Berm uda with the reef system, et cetera. But then it goes on.
It speaks about two areas which, hopefully, the r espective Ministers will speak about today on this r eport, in public education and in health care.
Now, here the Committee are coming out in
favour with respect to public education, coming out in
favour of radical changes, and they want us to have (a
phrase that keeps coming up through the report) “a world class system.” And I think we have to be very
careful from saying we have a sub- standard system to
then saying we are going to immediately, somehow,
jump to a world- class system. And I think what you do,
you have to proceed by small steps when you are
dealing with these systems and you are going to have
to take it a day at a time.
But, you know, they are saying here, one of
the quotes (and this is on page 3 i n the middle of the
page, the middle paragraph) says, “one glaring reality
is the portion of our population that is unable to com-pete for existing job opportunities, much less present
themselves as candidates for emerging 21st century
work! If we fail to act decisively now, our passivity will
be viewed as the most significant missed opportunity
in the history of the Island.”
And that is a great concern to me, Mr. Speaker, and hopefully the Minister of Education can give some sort of a clear picture. Because there has been
concern recently with respect to the Cambridge exam results that were released that we are lagging in some
areas. And I think at an earlier point in time we seemed to be making some progress and now we
seem to have dropped back a bit. And I think that this
gives the Minister a great opportunity to explain to
members of the public —both with respect to the
Cambridge results what the situation is (and they came out, I believe, a bit slowly, they could have come out more quickly), and what is go ing to happen
with middle schools.
We have recently heard the statements that,
you know, Bermuda is a country where now the m ajority of students are at private schools. I think the fi gure I saw quoted was 52 per cent of children are at
private schools.

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.
Member.
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am delighted to hear that, but I think that is
still an issue now that we are facing with respect to
parents . . . in the vernacular, they are fleeing public
school to some degree because of uncertainty. So,
2652 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly this Government had announced that it was going to
effectively get rid of middle schools over some period
of time and replace them with some sort of charter
schools, or some schools of that sort. And at the m oment I think parents have been particularly bothered
by that, not because they necessarily disagree with
the idea, but there is huge uncert ainty. Parents just do
not know what is going to happen.
And recently we have had the unfortunate si tuation where the Minister, I believe was forced to
close T. N. Tatum School. And the children who were attending T. N. Tatum have been shuffled around the
Island to a variety of schools and there have been
questions and, in some cases, complaints that where
they have gone to . . . that there was not a clear plan.

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Point of order.

POINT OF ORDER
[Misleading]
Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: Once again, I think, the
Member is misleading the House unintentionally. The
students from T. N. Tatum have not been shuffled around. They have been transferred to Sandys Secondary Middle School, Whitney Insti tute and Dellwood
Middle School. They have not been shuffled; they
have been transferred. And [this is] where they will
remain until a decision on T. N. Tatum is made.

Thank you, Minister.
Member?

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
And that was certainly . . . and I appreciate
the Minister’s intervention there. And obviously I know
he will speak to it when he gets his turn. And, obviously, he understands that parents are looking for answers, in other words, a time frame.
I do not think they will deny that there have
been some challenges in some of the schools where
those students have gone, perhaps, just from nu mbers, et cetera. But this, I think, gives him the opportunity to address some of those issues which have
come up.
Movi ng on, Mr. Speaker, and I am just going
through the report page by page, so I will be sort of
jumping back and forth a bit. In the area of health care
there was criticism with respect to health care. And this, specifically, is again on page 3. It is the second to
last paragraph on page 3. It says: “The recently announced reforms by Government lack a holistic met hod and will have unintended consequences that will
only exacerbate the existing challenges.”
Now, it goes on to say that we have difficulty.
And w e all know that and the Minister of Health has said it on a number of occasions that the Bermudian’s
lifestyle choices are not, in all cases, the best and we
face unacceptably high levels of chronic preventable
disease, such as, diabetes and heart disease, resul ting in (according to the report) overburdening financial
impacts which should be a wake- up call to us all.
And there they speak to, you know, convening
a new team of resources and, again, they are talking . . . in this case, I think they went to t he Johns Hopkins/Bloomberg School of public health, a world- class
expert in advising on the design of health care sy stems. And then they go to say (this is at the top of
page 4), “Ignoring the advice of best -in-class experts,
in this instance, would be pur e folly and would certai nly lead to under -informed choices. Bermuda cannot
afford to delay leveraging this and other similar, infl uential resources.”
And they go on to say that “getting control of
this cost and implementing a sustainable long- term
solutio n is a high priority.”
Now, we all know the Minister is attempting to
tackle that the Minister of Health . . . there have been
some public meetings. Very unfortunately a member of the upper House who was at the public meeting
held in St. George’s was attacking those doctors who
attended and asked questions. And I was not at the
meeting, but the reports I got said that the doctors,
although they were asking pointed questions and were quite respectful, they were being upbraided by
one of the PLP parliamentar ians for daring to go and
ask the Minister questions.

I do not know . . . I did not
see that Member at that meeting. I was a PLP parli amentarian at that meeting, and not one PLP Member attacked anyone. We listened and we listened. And I
take great umbrage to that Member suggesting an ything that would impugn the integrity of members. It is wrong . . . absolutely wrong.

Member, I would advise you that hearsay is not necessarily what you want to be going on.
And if you were not present there, I would restrict from
using hearsay.

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: I will clarify that. So, there was
a PLP Senator Richardson who upbraided those doctors in the Royal Gazette. So, if my friend the Honourable Member Kim Swan is saying he was wrong, then
I will take that under advisement.

[Inaudible interjection]



Bermuda House of Assembly POINT OF ORDER

Thank you.
Member?
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: It was never . . . I never suggested that the Senator spoke at the meeting.
[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: No, I did not. He criticised the
doctors after the meeting, not at the meeting.
Now, the Minister of Health, in my view, has
belatedly, and perhaps too slowly, engaged with the local community in consultation. It has done a lot of
damage to the reform effort when, you know, the first
statement that is put out there is, We have already
decided what we are going to do; but now we are going to come and consult with you. Some of the issues
that seem to exist with it are that people just do not
know what is intended. So, we are trying to get clar ified what the Government intends.
Now, usually in these cases, when one is doing health reforms, certainly what happened during
the admittedly short period when I was Health Mini ster, was that we would go to actuaries. And I think we
were using Morneau Shepell, which was a Canadian
firm of health actuaries who would do projections on
what effect certain changes on the health system would have. And back in 2011 and 2012 the then PLP
Government did a report on health, and they did a
financial report. And I believe they used projections by
Morneau Shepell. But I do not see that those projections have been updated, or, if they have been updated, I do not see that they have been published. And
that would certainly help members of the public to un-derstand.
And, obviously, if you are not quite sure what
it is you a re going to do, you can do a variety of pr ojections —a high, medium and a low projection.

Hon. Wayne L. Furbert: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.
Member, just be mindful that we are on a particular topic and if you can relate that to your comments we would be quite all right.
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: I am obliged. I am obliged.
So, as I go through the report . . . I am on
page 4 of the report. I have quite a way to go, 30 pag-es here. But the third foundational element they speak
to in the I ntroduction it refers to talent and immigration
and how we require the . . . how what we do, “given
the skills required, we are not likely to initially find all of the solutions at home, therefore, requiring the acquisition of globally trained persons.”
So, obviously, while you are trying to train up
local talent, that is going to take time. And it is probably the case that you are never going to achieve the result, that you will always be doing . . . in such a
small community, if you want to be an international
financial and insurance centre you are not always going to find those experts on Island. And they applaud
the Government there— I might say that they applaud
the Government’s decision to move forward with the Talent Assessment initiative for senior c ivil servants.
Now, one of the things . . . we are on that
same page. There are some quite strong criticisms of the Government’s ability to collect data. And this is not a new thing, so I am not trying to blame the present
Government for all of this. But in the last paragraph on
page 4 says: “Upon the completion of our Current State assessment, it was clear that the existing collection, assessment, manipulation and utilisation of data
to inform policy is woefully inadequate. This leads to
sub-optimal and u nder-informed decision- making and
policy choices. Government’s existing technology i nfrastructure does not allow for efficient data collection,
collation or sharing. Throughout Government, data is
not current; it is insufficient, incomplete, not readily
accessible, under -utilised and/or non- existent.”
So, I think that is quite hard -hitting. And one of
the things about these recommendations, and certai nly the view that I take, is that Government has to be,
obviously, very careful where it spends its money. Because we will come, as we go along, to the situation
with the national debt and how unsustainable we are
financially and what steps we should take to address that. While the good members who are members of
the Committee—and I want to thank them for all t he
efforts they have made and all the time they have
spent on it. But in some of these recommendations,
obviously, you want to upgrade your data or your
technical infrastructure. It is going to cost you an enormous amount of money. And the question is
wher e does that enormous amount of money come
2654 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly from when we are already in an unsustainable pos ition with respect to our debt? And we have been very
lucky to date that interest rates have remained extraordinarily at record low levels, which have protected
us.
Now, if we look at page 6 it speaks to some
broader elements that I think the Minister who spoke
first spoke to. You know, they are saying . . . it is sort
of a wish list, saying that we would like a world- class
public education system; an affordable, accessible,
comprehensive and holistic health care system that delivers quality outcomes that meet global standards;
they want a growing population (which is a challenge);
an increase of positive citizenship; we need to ec onomically diversify our economy; and in terms of tourism and international business we need a distinct
brand and we need a hospitality experience for our
visitors; we need an infrastructure (energy, telecommunications, transport and housing) that can appr opriately support not only our existing needs, but future
growth and the ability to withstand the effects of cl imate change; a mechanism to effectively respond to
emerging threats to Bermuda’s global competitiv eness; and our citizens embracing technology and the
opportunities that come with it s adoption.
Now, again, these are all very positive recommendations and with very, sort of, high- sounding
desires. So, obviously, in some cases they can be
achieved through a change of approach and maybe a
change of heart. But in other cases, they are goi ng to
need to have enormous amounts of money and r esources dedicated to them in order to achieve these results, and over what period of time? They are not things which you can achieve overnight.
But again and again what comes up in the r eport is that we ha ve a big concern with our “shrinking
and ageing population, an underperforming education system” (and I am quoting from the report here) “and
health care costs that are spiralling out of control.”
And I think that probably summarises the report at the
midd le of page 6, if I might just read those three lines
again, “If we are going to change Bermuda’s traject ory, we will have to change our mind- sets to deal with
the social and economic realities of the 21
st century: a
shrinking and ageing population, an underperforming
education system and health care costs that are spiralling out of control.”
Those are the things we to deal with. It goes
on to say, “Our community is changing: Seniors will soon make up a quarter of our population.” And with
all the attendant costs that an ageing population has:
you have a smaller working force, you have less people contributing (whether it is to social insurance or
the health premiums), and you have older people who
have a more delicate health situation, they have more
medical needs, et cetera. So, it is a big challenge. And
it is not only for Bermuda, but around the world, but
we are seeing it big time in Bermuda. It goes on to say with respect to health that
some 17 per cent of adults in Bermuda have chronic
disease due to poor lifestyles. And, interestingly, they
say that Bermudians are “slightly delusional.” Well, I
do not know if that is certainly in the case of health, but it says in the case of health because 83 per cent
of Bermudians say “their health is good, very good or
excellent. Yet a STEPS to a Well Bermuda Survey found 75 per cent of the population is overweight or obese.” But I think that is a bit of a strong statement,
but certainly with respect to our hospital we have a
challenge with those people who are consta ntly needing to use the Emergency Department for chronic di seases, for which lifestyle is the choice. And I know it is
a big challenge for to Minister, it has been a big cha llenge to past Ministers and past Governments to get a system where people will see that they need to make
changes in their lifestyle.
And I have seen, you know, one of the things
. . . and the Health Minister, I think, would like to
speak to a number of elements here and sum up what
the intention is. We have seen some big changes. We
have seen changes to the Standard Health Benefit.
We have seen additional money going into the Mutual
Reinsurance Fund (MRF). We have seen a block
grant to the hospital. And, you know, the hospital was
granted a large amount of money —some $60 [million]
or $70 million, what they would usually get under a
budget, I think —to make sure they did not have add itional claims for money.
But recently I have heard rumours that the
hospital is stopping paying overtime in some areas, like in the image processing areas, an d then saying,
Well, we are not doing this anymore, we are just doing
the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, and we will put the rest
of it out. And the waiting times are up for some of
these things, the waiting times can be four to six
weeks in some of the imaging departments —the MRI,
et cetera. And it would be useful for the Minister of Health to take this opportunity to inform the people of Bermuda exactly what the situation is right now, what
we have to deal with.
We have all sorts of challenges. I know they
are working on getting unique patient identifiers
against . . . you know, that is another project that is
going to require an enormous amount of money, and
even just for the public health system, ignoring private
doctors who are very jealous of their patient s’ data for
a variety of reasons. But these are things which I . . .
these are details, I think, which the Minister could a ddress here in the House.
So, one of the things that members of the
Committee had said is that they feel that in Bermuda there are a lot of negative emotions existing, which we
can understand. But saying that we have to somehow
get past that and it speaks here in the language of economics on page 8, the language of economics,
behavioural economics, and talks about those things
are self -costs and we have to somehow put the past


Bermuda House of Assembly behind us and move forward. And if we do not swim
together, we are going to sink together —those are my
words.
So, they talk about a journey of transformation
and they are saying this is not easy, but Bermuda has
faced challenging situations before.
I am going to try to speed up a little bit. They
go on, again, about education—and this the entirety of page . . . it starts at page 11 and goes on through 12
and 13. They talk about education being the glue that brings us together. But at the bottom of that page, you
know, there is much . . . there is much criticism there.
It is saying in the fourth paragraph . . . it starts off in
the fourth paragraph in the middle of page 11: “But we have a problem. The way we educate and train Ber-mudians is not preparing them to be trained resources
to fill the many jobs that businesses need, especially
in financial services, hospitality, health care and the
trades. Whilst it is true that we cannot possibly educate and train enough Ber mudians for the many highly
specialised jobs that businesses need, we must do a
better job of training our people for those jobs on offer.”
It goes on to say, “Parents have expressed
dissatisfaction with public education by voting with their feet. Whether because of parental dissatisfaction
or declining birth rates and overall population, the
proportion of students enrolled in private schools continues to rise, whilst, for public schools, the proportion
shows a consistent, steady decline. Parental dissati sfaction is not without cause. As early as Primary Six
(P6), the majority of our public -school students are not
meeting the Department of Education’s targets set for English, Mathematics and Science. Performance is
particularly bad in Mathematics.”
It goes on to say, “Student performance in
English, Mathematics and Science does not improve
with time. By the time our students reach Middle
School Three (M3), Mathematics and Science results
get worse relative to the international standards set by
Cambridge Inter national Examinations, which is the
Department’s chosen standard of measurement. This
downward trend continues at the senior school level.”
And it goes on with a statement, which I found
incredibly strong and which the Minister will need to speak to. The C ommittee say in their report at the bottom of page 11, “The Department of Education, as
presently constituted, is not a part of the solution to
addressing poor student performance. It is a part of
the problem.”
Now, Mr. Speaker, I am actually shocked by
that statement in this report. That is a very strong
statement in a report by a committee effectively appointed by the Government, and it is one which should
send shivers down the spine of each and every one of
us.
It goes on to say, “ A common criticism of the
Department of Education by the many G overnment -
sponsored reviews is that the public education system lacks accountability at all levels and that the D epartment lacks leadership, as well as a vision for improv-ing public education. It follows that our pu blic educ ation system lacks the wherewithal to address the cha llenge of preparing our students for further study or the working world. ”
Now, they go on . . . and that is very strong
language. It is not my language; it is the committee’s language. And they go on to say that their solution is
to (in the middle of page 12) “Create an independent authority for public education that is responsible for the performance management of educators and r esearching and implementing a holistic” (again, that
word) “public education system that is appropriately
sized/structured, resulting in a learning environment
that facilitates optimum student success.”
And it goes on to say the standard that the
committee would like, in particular our public school
children, to reach. Obviously, this committee wants
our public school children to reach a very high stand-ard of education. But I think that this report, again, is .
. . this is a report that the Government itself has man-dated. This report coming out gives the Ministers concerned the ideal opportunity to address the challenges
in the system. And I am not necessarily [saying] that I
agree with the committee in terms of the precise n ature of the criticism, but they are making, really, a [stringent] criticism in those areas. And I think those Ministers will have to address this in a very substa ntive fashion. I appreciate that the Minister who pr esented the paper is really allowing the individual Mi nisters to make their own answer to the suggestions
and the criticisms that are cont ained in this document.
Again, on pages 14 and 15, it is going on
about health care and Bermudians’ love of their mac aroni and cheese and cassava pie and potato salad, et
cetera, and how this leads to obesity and other issues
that we have on the health si de with respect to chronic
health challenges. And on page 15, in the middle of
the second paragraph, it says, “To ensure a broad
change in behaviour by citizens, the programme”
(talking about healthy eating) “should be mandatory in
both public and private schools. Development, impl ementation, oversight and data gathering for the pr ogramme must be the joint responsibility of the Mini stries of Health and Education and key community organisations. This will eliminate silos and fragmented
efforts and draw on the knowledge and expertise of
professionals from relevant areas to ensure a holistic”
(that word again— a holistic ) “approach that should
greatly minimise the incidence of obesity, Type 2 di abetes, hypertension and high cholesterol within our
community over one or two generations from now.”
Now, it goes on to talk about the challenges,
saying that “Just under 10% of Bermudians have no health insurance and the number is rising . . . Go vernment’s financial assistance programme, Health
Insurance Plan [HIP] and FutureCare insurance are
acting as a backstop to increased exclusion from the
2656 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly health care system. Moreover, Bermudians with jobs
and health insurance are spending on average, 18%
[$11,363/$63,288] of their income on health care . . .
Given that housing, food, other household goods and
services, and electricity and gas take up 56% . . . of the average household’s budget, that leaves
approximately 26% for everything else . . .”
And it goes on to say —again, it is strong la nguage— it says, “The current health system is not sustainable from the perspective of cost, service provision or capacity. Prevention is a critical component to shift current usage levels caused by chronic diseases that
are greatly impacted by lifestyle.”
I note here, Mr. Speaker, a variety of Health
Ministers have struggled with this. I think there is a
programme in place. I think my colleague, the Ho nourable Member Jeanne Atherden, when she was the Minister of Health, started a project to deal with pe ople with chronic diseases. The people who were the
frequent flyers , as they called them, and the super -
users , who were going to the emergency department
to get them out of that stream, and there was a contract where they would be dealt with by certain phys icians’ offices that were contracted t o do the work. And
it would be interesting to know what the results of those programmes are; they are still going on today.
But the problem here is that, you know, if you
create a health system where you do not control the costs at the start point, if you do not control what ph ysicians can charge, if you do not control what tests
can be given, you are not controlling costs. So, you can mandate a system and say, Well, everyone will
have free health treatment. But then, the costs will
continue to spiral. And the issue is, who is going to
pay for it? Under the health reform, some of the r emarks that have been made to me are that it is not
addressing the root cause. And so, you are going to
get . . . as you provide more health care, you are g oing to be putting it on an ever -smaller number of people. Whether it is people who pay health premiums, a
portion of which, or a larger proportion of which, will
be paid into the Mutual Reinsurance Fund, or whether
you are going to increase taxes around the country, you are going to be putting people in an untenable
and unsustainable position.
So, somehow we have to get grips with the
initial cost itself of the health system. And, you know,
the recent thing I saw about the Imaging Department
at the Bermuda Hospital was not encouraging to me,
because they are saying, Well, we are not going to try
to do any more. We are not going to have Saturdays.
We are not going to pay overtime. That is going to be
put out to the private sector to deal with. And the costs will, inevitably, go up.
And the last paragraph on page 15 is very
important, a very short paragraph. “It is also important to note that, if we fix the health care industry, but do
not expand our population, Bermuda will continue to
be challenged with higher than acceptabl e costs as there will simply not be the number of individuals
across which to spread those costs.” So, basically, it
is just saying it is unsustainable. It is just unsustain able. Even if you make the reforms, people are not go-ing to be able to pay the cost , whomever you put that
payment on.
Now, over to page 16, they go on to this,
again, holistic health care system that prioritises pr evention, chronic disease management, health care
delivery, et cetera. And those were all good, good
suggestions for further study. But how you are going to carry those from ideas into practice is going to be a
challenge. We all know the big challenges they are
having in the United States and the big debates they
are having with one of the Democratic candidates,
Senator Elizabeth Warren, making very broad and
progressive statements about what she wants to do.
But, obviously, she is saying, In order to do it, we are
going to need this massive increase in tax revenues .
And then she is debating if she wants to get it from
billiona ires and have a billionaires’ tax.
I am not going to go . . . I do not have the time
to go into the details of all of the suggestions with r espect to health care, dealing with chronic problems
and long- term care and palliative care, et cetera. But
at the bottom of page 16, it talks about the BHB [Bermuda Hospitals Board] and the hospital financing.
Now, there they do suggest using what they call a cap-and-collar funding model for BHB.

[Inaudible interjection]

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Page 17. I am sorry. And that
is at the bottom of page 17. It speaks to that unit. And
then, it goes on to talk about a health commission unit
within the Ministry of Finance that adjudicates the pri cing of health care services and payors to ensure long-term economic performance objectives are met. So, I
think what they are saying here . . . and this is very
important. At the bottom of page 17, under BHB and
Hospital Financing, it is saying that it is not enough to
give a block grant to the hospital. You have to have
some sort of service -level agreement. Not only do you
need a service- level agreement, there has to be
somebody to adjudicate on whether they are meeting their objectives under that agreement. And those are
the pieces, I think, that we are missing at the present
time.
So, they are saying here, Sure, there is proper
monitoring of the BHB Acute Care Wing debt by Mi nistry of Finance. So, again they recognise that there
are big financial issues facing us, and you cannot deal
with the health portion without dealing with the funding
and financing portion.
Again, on [page] 18, it goes into more details
for standard health benefit and health care regulation.
It talks about giving more power to the Bermuda Med-ical Council.


Bermuda House of Assembly Now, it goes on to mention a number, at page
18, ha lfway down the page; item number 5 speaks to
technology. It speaks to the issue I brought up earlier,
saying “Adopt an integrated electronic health record
that tracks patient data and produces health metrics that assist with decision- making for health care stakeholders.” And again, I think this debate, Mr. Speaker,
gives the Minister of Health a wonderful opportunity to
say where we are with respect to electronic health
records in the health system generally, and in the King
Edward Hospital in particular, and how doctors can be encouraged to participate in a system of electronic
health records.
And that is not just for tracking metrics and
data and for financial stuff. That is for the health of the
patient. If you go from one doctor to another doctor
and the records are not easily transferable or understood, and that applies within the hospital and liaising
with doctors as well, we are going to have detriments
to people’s health and even deaths that could result
from miscommunications on health records.
Now there, obviously, the committee is saying
that–– they are talking about a Johns Hopkins Clinical
Affiliation Agreement. And I would like that, and I am
sure the public would like to know what the position is
with that recommendation. My recommendation is the
committee’s recommendation, and people need to
know where that stands.
We go over on page 19. We get to immigr ation, which is very topical, of course. We are waiting
on an immigration reform Bill to come to the House
since . . . well, for at least the whole of this year. It
points out there at page 19 the challenges that we are
facing. Everyone is familiar with them, but we will r ecap them. It is saying, in the second paragraph from
the end of page 19, “Our headwinds are the same as
those facing the US , Japan and many European cou ntries: a shrinking population, poor student performance, an oversized debt burden and rising inequal ity.” In one sense, rising inequality is nice; it means we have still got some rich people in your country. If they
all get up and leave, that problem is solved, but you
are not better off.
[Inaudible interjection]
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: You will be very cold indeed if
they all leave; I can tell you.
And then it goes on to say, you know, talking
about the population, it is tal king about people retiring.
And now that small families are the norm, the workingaged population is smaller and smaller. It is smaller than the non- working- aged share of the population. It
goes on to say, page 20, “Student performance is
poor. Our public education system is not producing
the talent that our island and economy needs to sus-tain itself.”
And then the next paragraph says, “Our debt
burden is too large. Oversized private ($3.5 billion) and public ($2.5 billion) . . . debt weigh down economic growth.” So that “[a] sizable chunk of a household’s
income goes to paying down its credit card, car loan
and mortgage debt. Added to that, the Government is
increasing taxes to pay off its debt, which leaves few-er dollars in the hands of households to spend on the
necessities of life. It should be noted that while taxes
are increasing, the Government is making efforts to
implement a more progressive approach to taxation
(i.e. the recent decreases in payroll tax for small bus inesses) and identifying new sour ces of revenue.”
Well, of course, the danger of taxes is that if
you raise them on the wrong people or raise them too
much, they vote with their feet, and they get up and
they are gone, and they do not come back.
So, the committee then talks about the need
to attract additional talent to the Island. And this goes not just for immigration, but also goes for capital i nvestment. You have to quote that sage, Bob Ric hards—

[Laughter]
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: —about the need for inward
capital investment. I knew that would wake up some
of the Members on that side.

[Laughter]

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: And I do not want to get s egued on that. But it notes in the report that Bermuda
has been built on immigration. There have been waves of immigration at various times in our history,
and it speaks to the West Indians. It speaks to Port uguese immigrants, as well as to the English- descent
immigrants whom we have.
But this committee comes out and, you know,
it is interesting to see because the committee was a
very broad set of people. At the bottom of page 20, it
says, “We need to change our views on immigration
and avoid the over -protectionist policies of the past,
as they resulted in unintended consequences. Going
forward, our approach must be more market based.”
And t hen it goes on to say, on page 21, “Our Immigr ation Recommendation: Reform immigration to enable
job creation with appropriate protections.” And I sort of
skip ahead, halfway down, on number 3, it says, “R esolving the issues associated with family and long -
term residency.”
And that speaks to the urgency of immigration
reform. I know that the Minister is dealing with that,
and he may want to speak to it today, or he may not.
But we have to see that some of our insular and xenophobic attitudes will sink Berm uda. We will not be
swimming if we do not embrace reform.
They speak there, you know, they are cha llenging the Government. These things are hard to get
changed from within. But number 6 talks about aut omating and streamlining the immigration process. And
2658 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly these things are a challenge. And perhaps the Mini ster of National Security will want to speak to immigr ation in that regard to see what changes . . . I guess the
people on the committee who were from international
companies feel that their work permit requests are not treated with enough speed. My own view was that it
had sped up since they made an issue of it. The Go vernment had made a big effort to speed up that pr ocess. And this report, of course, came out the 1
st of
August. It would be interesting to h ear the Minister
speak to the steps that he has taken to speed that up.
When they talk of high- priority recommendations on page 22, they talk about lowering the cost of
living. Now, this is an extremely challenging one in
Bermuda. Everything in Bermuda costs a lot, and we
are all aware of that. And a lot of things the committee
have suggested are going to result in higher costs,
higher taxes. It is not going to result in anything lower.
If you want a better education system, you are going
to have to spend huge amounts of money on it. If you
want government to be more electronic and digital,
you are going to have to spend huge amounts of
money. So, a lot of these recommendations, perhaps
people can agree on them, but where is the money
going to come from? How are we going to generate
the money? And how do we be smart about restructuring the system so we get the best bang for our
buck?

[Pause]
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Now, it goes on . . . and this is
something for the Minister of Finance. And I know he
has done a bit of work today. He has been on his feet with the pension reforms.
At the bottom of page 23, at number 6, it says
that we have to “Address Bermuda’s current debt bur-den issue. Bermuda’s current debt level is unsustai nable and puts our country’s rat ing and financial future
at risk. To address the issue, Bermuda needs to: i. identify the ideal debt to GBP” (I think it means GDP)
“ratio and improve our ratio to that level; and ii. focus
on obtaining and maintaining a favourable credit rating
that is in line with the needs and goals of our country.”
Now, if we do not get control of our spending,
exactly where we are heading is [that] the credit rating is going to sink. So, here they make a suggestion of
the formation of an advisory council, as well as a debt
oversight committee to ensure that debt raised is used
for an appropriate purpose. And then, they suggest
being innovative and using “privatisation, private–
public partnerships and/or issue of Bermuda- dollar
denominated bonds to Bermudians.”
Now, I am not so sure of those. Privatisation
does not always reduce the cost, and in many cases increases the costs, although it can often increase
efficiency, as well. Private –public partnerships have
been used by both parties and used by the PLP in what was t he new hospital, but became the new wing of the hospital, and was used by the new OBA Government for the new airport terminal —not a new ai rport, but a new airport terminal. And they are talking
about the issue of Bermuda- dollar denominated
bonds.
I would love to hear the Minister of Finance
address that. I am not convinced myself that this is a
good recommendation because, effectively, what you
are doing is taking monies out of the local economy to
put them into a government bond. And I am not sure
that would help the Bermuda economy. I am not sure you could raise enough money that it would positively
affect the amount of debt Bermuda holds or have any
bearing on our credit rating.
Now, again, you know, this is perhaps overreaching. On page 24, in the middle of the page, it is
number 7. It says, “Position Bermuda as a World leader in Government E -Services by 2022.” Again,
that is something that requires an enormous expend iture of money. I do not know . . . they have a long list of things that they want done. They have a list here of
everything they want. And again, I am not even sure
who the Minister responsible for e- services is to say
what that would cost and whether that is doable in a
period of three years or whether it is pie in the sky
[talk].
They go on, on page 25, to talk about “Quick
Win Recommendations.” They basically say open up
commercial real estate to foreign persons. And the Government have done that, but they have restricted
it to investments for . . . I think some of it is for housing in E EZ areas. And I am not sure how that is going
to go; time will tell whether that is taken up quickly or
whether it is taken up slowly, or whether it is not taken
up at all. We will soon see a result on that. But what
they are certainly suggesting is more of a wide opening-up of that market.
I think the suggestions for tourism are not particularly controversial, talking about relicensing for
hotels, where the Minister there might want to speak
to whether he supports these recommendations or
whether he does not support them. They are talking
about modernising liquor licensing, which I think they
are working on, eliminating the moratorium on rental,
electric vehicles and allowing hotels to have minibus
licenses. We have an awful lot of minibuses out there,
and I think that the Government had been working on
some form of service- level requirements when these
people are getting their licences. Someone said there
were something like 300 of them out there. And I am
sure the Minister can speak to that and tell us ho w
many there are out there, what the service- level r equirements are on those licence holders, whether
there are any service- level requirements.
One of my concerns with electric vehicles is
the same as it is with all of these things: What are we
doing . . . and the Minister of Public Works can speak
to this, perhaps. What are we doing with all of these
lithium batteries? It is a dangerous substance, and


Bermuda House of Assembly what are we doing with it all? Particularly if we get a
lot of electric cars, what are the plans to deal with
that?
In terms of international business, of course,
there were international business members on the
committee. And of course, they are saying we need to
be more collaborative and proactive. And I am sure all
of those are good things to suggest. And I hope the
Government is going to encourage them. It would be
good if the Minister of Finance, perhaps, can speak to
that. They may be speaking to, liaising with, the Reg-istrar of Companies and the BMA (Bermuda Monetary
Authority).

[Inaudible interjectio n]

Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: At the end of the conclusion . .
it is interesting what the conclusion is. The conclusion
that the committee—

Member, just note you have got less
than five minutes.
Hon. Trevor G. Moniz: Yes. I am going to finish i n
probably less than a minute, Mr. Speaker.
In the conclusion, it speaks to the metaphor or
the analogy, saying that in order for us to achieve ev erything they have recommended that we do, Bermudians. . . it will be necessary to go into “ hurricane rest oration mode.” So, what they are saying is w e must all
come together and, effectively, treat this as sort of a national emergency, overriding personal feelings or
any sort of resentments. And we must move forward together to achieve these objectives if Bermuda is to
survive as a vibrant economic community, where people live a good life.
And unfortunately, we have seen no signs
from the Premier that he is on board with that. We
have seen very divisive language, talk of friends and
enemies . We will, of course, see how he speaks at his
annual conference tomorrow night, whether it is all
about friends and enemies, the rhetoric of populism,
or whether he is going to adopt the suggestions of the committee, and whether we are going to swim toget her or sink together. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes.

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: The BermudaFirst report,
while being a comprehensive report, I wish to just di scuss the areas that deal with education. I am appr e-ciative of the report, and it was divided into two parts: one called The Current State of Educatio n and one
called Future State. I guess we could possibly say,
Possible Future State.
Mr. Speaker, this report was data- driven, and
it took a detailed look at education from its current
perspective. We have heard the initial speaker who
just sat down talk about education and he hoped that
the Minister would get up and address some of the
things that were mentioned within that [report]. But,
Mr. Speaker, I think one of the things that I have to agree with the former speaker on is that we cannot
[use] tribali sm in terms of how we look at this, how we
look at this report.
We have to look at education from a holistic
point of view and how we —meaning all of us here, all
of us in the public —can move education forward. Our
children deserve nothing less. We need t o stop worr ying about quick fixes, which seems to be the downfall
of education, from my perspective, and start to talk
about sustainable solutions that will carry us not just
for the next few years or not just for the term of the current Government, but for generations and gener ations moving forward.
Mr. Speaker, the Education Committee of
BermudaFirst had the freedom to look at public education—and in fact, Bermuda’s education system, and
that includes both public and private—from a very unique perspectiv e, a perspective being free from bias, and [being] from a non- political- point -scoring view.
Mr. Speaker, the recommendations that we
see within this report, that we see here, should not be used as a political football, because, as I said, all of us
need t o be pulling in the same direction in order for us
to uplift education to where it needs to be. And I can pledge that, not as has been done with reports in the
past, where we have people up here saying, This was
not done; that was not done, Mr. Speaker, I will speak
very comprehensively to this report and what is being
done currently and what will be done in the future to
address some of the concerns that were mentioned
within this report.
Having an education system that works for all
of us only bodes well for the Island itself, Mr. Speaker.
We need an education system that puts out highquality graduates. That is a given, because high -
quality graduates are a positive for our entire Island.
And it pains me, it absolutely pains me, Mr. Speaker,
. . . and we go back to this tribalism thing that the
speaker before me talked about. It absolutely pains me, Mr. Speaker, that whenever we pick up our daily it is almost always a negative story about education, or
a positive story that could be printed in a positive way
[but] the negative connotation is automatically assumed first. And then if you read, you read on the
front page a negative headline, but by the time you
get to page 2, the last paragraph, they talk about the positive things that may have happened. And that is
2660 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly not something that we need to continue to do if we are
going to move forward, Mr. Speaker.
Additionally, to that, Mr. Speaker, we do not
need to see this constant barrage of political op- eds
from the Opposition on education, op- eds that are a lmost invariably erroneous, and most times, complet ely wrong in what it is that they are saying, Mr. Speaker. This does not do anything to make our students
feel any better than what they do within our school
system, Mr. Speaker. And, you know, what really
astounds me about some of these op- eds, these poli tical op -eds, is that they always weave in there, the
politics need to be taken out of education— in a polit ical op- ed, as if we were all born yesterday, Mr.
Speaker.
So, you know, I just wanted to get that out
there because I did not come here today, Mr. Speak-er, to talk about what the local press and what the
Opposition tends to do with education, which in my
opinion seems to be this infatuation with a desire to
malign education, no matter what it is we do. I came
here today to talk about this report in particular, and
the sections that pertain to education. There is a
wealth of information contained within this report, for
those who care to read it, Mr. Speaker. And I encourage people to actually read it beca use they will learn
something about education and what is going on, and
some of the challenges we do face and some of the
solutions that are already in place that are slowly
weaving their way in in order to make our system better than what it has been for the last several years.
Now, Mr. Speaker, we find ourselves in 2019,
and we are at the cusp of a revolution, a revolution
within education. And we need to now start to have
this honest and difficult conversation that needs to get
us through. The speaker that spoke before me talked
about what is it . . . in order for us to do anything with
education, there needs to be money spent. And then
he also went on to talk about, How do we restructure
what we already have so we have more equitable use
of the resourc es that we have?
Well, Mr. Speaker, I just want to get into that
just a little bit, because it was mentioned within the report. Now, while the report has listed some data,
when we talk about the current state, and list data
about the schools, how many stud ents are there, how
many schools we have, et cetera, et cetera, Mr.
Speaker. I just want to expand upon that just a little bit
to bring some more clarity to some of the information
that was there.
Mr. Speaker, as of today, we have 4,587 st udents within the public school system. This is 1,000 students less than we had 10 years ago [and] two
thousand students less than we had 20 years ago. Mr.
Speaker, we currently have 10 preschools, 18 primary
schools, 5 middle schools, and 2 senior schools within our syst em. Along with that we have 2 schools for di sciplinary reasons for certain types of students and we have 1 school for students with special needs. Mr. Speaker, 20 years ago the average school population
for primary school was 182 students. Today, Mr.
Speak er, that is down to 122 students per school for
primary school. To take that even further, Mr. Speak-er, 5 of our primary schools have less than 100 st udents in them; 5 more have less than 110.
Mr. Speaker, when we talk about looking at
this from a different angle, when we talk about how can we utilise what we do have and utilise the r esources we have in a better [way], if we took all of the students we have in primary schools now and created two classes per primary school from P1 to P6, with 16
students eac h, we would only need 11 out of the 18
[primary] schools we have.

Wow!

Hon. Diallo V. S. Rabain: To break that down in
terms that could be greatly understood within these Chambers and possibly outside these Chambers,
when we talk about 11 schools, that leaves us with 7
schools that are unneeded, that equates to around $12 million in resources that could be piled into the
remaining 11 schools, Mr. Speaker. These are r esources that could be pushed back into things like
supplies that schools need, the rebuilding of schools,
or repurposing of schools so they have the state- ofthe-art equipment, [and] the reallocation of teacher
resources within the system. So instead of finding
teachers for 18 schools, we now need to find teachers
for 11 schoo ls, Mr. Speaker. These are some of the
things that we can do if we are to move toward a more
sustainable environment.
Now, Mr. Speaker, before the media, the O pposition, or even my colleagues, or the people out
there run out and say, The Education Minist er wants
to close schools, that is not what I am saying here.
What I am saying here, Mr. Speaker, is that we need
to prepare ourselves for these types of conversations as we move forward if we are going to have a system
that meets the standards that we need them to meet.
As we continue to transform education, as we conti nue to move toward the removal of middle schools, Mr.
Speaker, we also need to realise that this will result in
a realignment of our entire system from preschool to high school and these overall, comprehensive but
very difficult conversations will need to be had. But I
will get back to that in a minute, Mr. Speaker, because
I do want to talk about some other things here.
Mr. Speaker, when I read the report, I wanted
to congratulate the comm ittee in the efforts they have
done to compile this Current State report. The data
shown here is not different from anything that I have
been saying for the last two- plus years. Since I have
been Minister of Education, I have had the opportunity
to read al l the internal data that we do have. There is
a challenge with data within the Department of Educ ation. This is something that the Commissioner is dea ling with. And we just need to do a better job of collec tBermuda House of Assembly ing the relevant data so that we are in a position to
make a better judgment, better decisions on what
needs to be done within Education, Mr. Speaker.
I think we talked about earlier when we spoke
about the bulk of students not being in private school. They are in public school. Mr. Speaker, the report also
accurately points out that in the last 5 years we have
seen a decline of around 14 per cent from public
schools. But, Mr. Speaker, in private schools that d ecline is around 10 per cent. The enrolment within pr ivate schools has actually flattened off i n the last few
years and that is contained within the report when you
look at the education- specific report and not just the
summary report, Mr. Speaker.
So it should come as no surprise as well, Mr.
Speaker, that the bulk of the things that the Berm uda[First] report talks about are already covered within
Plan 2022, which is our strategic plan for education as we move forward. In fact, every problem talked about
and solution offered within the future plan, the Future
State Report ties directly into Plan 20 22, which bodes
well for what we are trying to do with education and
shows that continuing in the path that we are continuing in, we will get to where we need to get to in public
education, Mr. Speaker.
I do want to take one [moment] to address
something that was said when we talked about the
most recent Cambridge results. Mr. Speaker, the decisions that we make in education now will not show
up for four, five, six years from now. The decision that
the former Government made to reduce spending in
education when they immediately assumed the reins
of Government are now . . . those roosters are now
coming home to roost, Mr. Speaker. When the former Government implemented the freezing of any post
that was vacant or any post that had a resignation,
this had a detrimental effect within our education sy stem in the fact that . . . well, what I can only describe
as a perfect storm. Our education officers for math,
English, and science were not filled for four years.
Education officers within the Department of Educati on
are the officers that drive curriculum within the schools
themselves. Not having those critical education offi cers in place for four years, due to hiring freezes i mplemented by the former Government are now starting to show the effects of just not having them there.
But, Mr. Speaker, we have filled those posts.
We are in the process of filling those various posts
that are needed and we are moving forward with that.
And we should be seeing the results of the labours
that we are doing now in short order.
Mr. Speaker, I do want to talk about the seven
specific recommendations that came out of the BermudaFirst report and what we are doing in order to
address those. Mr. Speaker, one of the recommendations was “ all principals [must] be certified and able to
demonstrate innovative thinking, have strong performance management skills, excellent instructional
leadership skills and [to display] the ability to strategi-cally optimise the fiscal, physical and human r esources at their schools. ” Mr. Speaker, this recommendation is directly tied to Plan 2022, Priority 3.
Mr. Speaker, principal certifications have a lready started within the public school system with meetings with principals that started in August and
they continued in September. And with a matriculation
agreement between the Bermuda College and Far mington University, principal certifications will commence starting January 2020. Additionally, with the
completion . . . finally, the completion of the collective
bargaining agreement with [teachers] there wil l be for
once and finally be in place a principal evaluation r egime called the Macr al Principles , and that will be in
place. That has already been talked . . . that has already been run by the principals. They already know what needs to be done. The assist ant directors who
are in charge of the schools are already on top of that.
And now we will see actual performance appraisals
done for principals, something that hasn’t been done
in close to 20 years.
Mr. Speaker, another suggestion was all
teachers must be internationally certified from a list of
institutions screened and approved by the Department
of Education. Mr. Speaker, this is also directly related
to Plan 2022, Priority 3, and has already begun. Since
becoming the Minister I have commenced meeting with the BEC, the Bermuda Educators Council, which is an independent authority that regulates teacher certifications. They have been charged with . . . what I
have noted from the BEC is that they have not been
operating within the mandate of their legislat ion. One
of [the requirements] is that they are required to mai ntain a list of accredited institutions. That is something that I have talked to them about and they are on their
way of doing [this], Mr. Speaker.
We are also talking of better ways of accredi ting teachers and creating different levels of accredit ation so we can capture the teachers who are doing
just what they need to do to maintain accreditation, all
the way up to the teachers who are going above and
beyond what they need to do to maintain ac credit ation, so we can start separating some of the teachers
in ways that we can see the ones who are really go -
getters and the ones who are advancing, other than
the ones who are doing just what needs to be done to
remain certified.
I have also instructed them to come up with a
regime that looks at specialised teaching as well. So, instead of just having one registration bunch (which is
what they have now) we will now have . . . you can be
a specialised teacher in math, you can be a specia lised teacher in English, and this way it will allow us to
look at our teachers, look at them . . . it will allow the
BEC to be able to have a more complete roster of who
is in Bermuda, who is being allowed to teach here so
we can get a much better bang [for the buck] for the teachers we do have within the system.
2662 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly The next one, Mr. Speaker, was create a public school system where a minimum of 80 per cent of
local high school students will graduate with a high
school diploma. That means internationally reco gnised academic vocational qualifications. This Mr.
Speaker, is covered under Plan 2022, in priority . . . it
is located within all five priorities of Plan 2022, but
mostly in Priority 1, which is Increasing Academic R igor and Student Engagement. Priority 2 [is] Ensuring
Career, College, Workforce Readiness. This, Mr.
Speaker, is probably one of the most difficult areas to
quantify because we are not going to see the results
of this until students start passing through the pr ogrammes that are being put in place in order to m ake
sure that they are ready to enter into the workforce
after high school. However, it is something that is being looked at, Mr. Speaker.
Some of the things that have been put in
place to address some of these concerns are:
• standard base education;
• the revision of the various curriculums within
the high school;
• the introduction of foreign languages at the
preschool level;
• research into alternative school models for
students who may not be ready for mai nstream education or may need additional services ou tside of mainstream education (but,
Mr. Speaker, with that, the intent is always to
make sure that they go back into mai nstream);
• the continual phasing in of our STEAM [ Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and
Mathematics] curriculum at the primary schoo l
level;
• the implementation of the Cambridge ICT [I nformation Communication Technology]
course.
Mr. Speaker, I was absolutely amazed when I
began this job as the Minister of Education two and a
half years ago, that there was not an ICT curriculum
within our school system. That was one of the things
that I quickly, quickly looked at. That is how we ended
up with a coding programme within the first few
months of myself becoming Education Minister with
the hiring of an ICT education officer to drive that curriculum. And we are now in the process of training
teachers so that they can deliver that curriculum, Mr.
Speaker.
The Dual Enrolment Programme for both ac ademics and the applied technology (or vocational) is
something that is growing with leaps and bounds. And
for those naysayers out there who continuously say
that none of the Hopkins report recommendations
have been implemented, Mr. Speaker, dual enrolment
is one of the recommendations from the Hopkins r eport.
Mr. Speaker, the other thing is the expansi on
of the Pathways to Graduation. We have been very successful with the Penn Foster addition to what we
already have in place. And we are also looking to expand with the City & Guilds Certification with our st udents from the current ones that we do offer.
Mr. Speaker, another one of the recommendations is all schools must demonstrate an ability to
create an environment that supports the needs of
children and encourages all children in their care to
achieve. This is covered under Plan 2022, strategic
[prior ities] 1 and 2, as well, Mr. Speaker, and the new
school improvement plan initiative highlights this.
The School Improvement Programme is a
form that all principals must fill out about their school
that talks about the achievements the school has
reached in terms of obtaining academic grading (and
everything else) and what is the plan being put in place to improve so that we can show constant i mprovement through the school year of what is happening through the various terms, the three terms within
school. These are forms that will be made public.
They will be posted on the website for everyone to
see how their school, or their children’s school, is per-forming and what is being done to ensure that they
perform up to scratch.
Mr. Speaker, the recommendations that I just
mentioned, which were five out of the seven summa ries, are located in the Future State [Report] summary page. But if you look at the Future State Report, which
is actually [32] pages long, it will list all of the other
individual things that t he board saw. And what will be
striking when you read this is that every single one of them has where it ties into Plan 2022. This does bode
well for Plan 2022 and bodes well for what we are doing and how we are moving forward with education,
because we ha ve a report that talks about the state of
education, but it directly ties into everything that is
already taking place.
Well, Mr. Speaker, the two remaining recommendations from the Future State Report that have
been mentioned and the ones that will probably gather
the most steam out of all of these is the one to consider an independent education authority, and to r esearch and implement an education system that delivers the most appropriate size structure and learning
environment to foster optimum student success. Now,
Mr. Speaker, let me start with number two, the second
one first, and then I will get to the first one.
Everyone knows that the Government has
pledged to reform our education system by phasing
out middle schools. I have already mentioned, or you
have already heard me mention that this will also have to include the restructuring of our schools from pr eschool all the way up through high school. However,
Mr. Speaker, when we talk about realignment, the first
thing that jumps out of people’s mouths is, Which
schools will close? Which schools will disappear?
Where will the children go? And those sorts of things,
and I understand that, and I get that panic. But, Mr. Speaker, I do want to reiterate, and we have talked


Bermuda House of Assembly about it ad nauseam in these Cham bers, and I have
talked about it ad nauseam to the public, that Plan
2022 was a plan that was put together by the . . . with
. . . with . . . with lots of public input and we view it as
a plan that was built by Bermudians for Bermudians,
and this is what t hey want to see to happen to their
school system.
So, Mr. Speaker, if I go specifically to Plan
2022, [Priority] 4, which talks about Improving Infr astructure and Instructional Resources. What it states
is that this shall be our guide as we reform our educ ation system. Mr. Speaker, it is no coincidence that the
BermudaFirst report recognises this and lists this as
one of the key recommendations. To update the public, the Ministry is already evaluating the recent su bmissions of an RFP that we put out to sol icit overseas,
or non- Bermudian and local entities, to come in and
help with the reformation of our school system.
As I said, we are now evaluating the RFPs
that have come in and soon we will be talking with the
public about some of the things that we . . . how these
RFPs have been structured, what we are looking at as
we look to bring people in. But, Mr. Speaker, I think it
is important that I mention, directly quoting from Plan
2022, Strategy 4.6, which states, “Develop a Master
Facilities Plan that can direct the modernisation of
public school facilities in Bermuda.” The Plan further
talks about, in Strategy 4.6.3, and I want people to
listen to this very carefully, “Develop and implement a
long-term infrastructure renewal plan with building
designs based upon modern pedagogical standards.
This plan should outline a thoughtful strategy for ren ovating, rebuilding, and/or consolidating school facilities
. . . .”
So, Mr. Speaker, we have in our Plan 2022
our blueprint for moving forward, and we will stick to
that blueprint as we move forward. So while our plans
to phase out middle schools and revert to a two- tier
system are in train, this cannot be done without the
uncomfortable conversation that needs to be had
around the repurposing of our entire school sys tem.
Mr. Speaker, this needs to be done to allow us as a
country to provide our students with the best schools,
the best teachers, and ultimately, the best chances of
getting everything that they need in order to achieve
success.
Mr. Speaker, our educatio n system is a comprehensive one, a fact not lost on BermudaFirst, when
they speak of how private schools have the ability to
expel or refuse entry of a student while public school
systems do not have this option. And in fact, it also
goes on within the rep ort to state that any of the st udents who are expelled or refused entry into the pr ivate school system, will end up in the public school
system and they will have to be dealt with. That
means, Mr. Speaker, that regardless of the ability of a
student, the public education system needs to find a
way to ensure that they have adequate resources. As
we educate many different types of students today, it is increasingly difficult, with the number of locations in
existing structures that we have, for the status quo we
currently have in place to remain as is, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the final recommendation is the
Education Authority. After reading the report and di scussing at length with the BermudaFirst represent atives from the Education Committee and reviewing the
recommendations, it is clear to us, it is clear to me,
that some decisions need to be made, and these decisions will indeed be difficult ones. To this end, the
recommendation of an [Education] Authority is under
consideration by this Government.
Break ing the status quo of the last 25 years is
important, but difficult with the challenges that we
have to face, challenges like repurposing schools and
realigning our infrastructure. We must recognise that
perhaps it is time for these types of decisions to b e
removed from Opposition political op- eds, to be r emoved from Ministers standing in front of micr ophones, to a state where a non- political entity can and
will move forward to do what is best for our children.
I want to take this time to apologise for those
out there who seem to think that the creation of an
Education Authority will mirror what has been done
with the BTA [Bermuda Tourism Authority]. This is far
from the truth. This is far from reality that any of us will
ever see. In talking with the BermudaFirst members,
they also realise this as well. There is a tremendous
amount of work if this is to take place. There is a tr emendous amount of planning if this is to take place. A
set up of an Education Authority will be so . . . it has to
be so different from a BTA, that we cannot even begin
to start talking about the nuts and bolts of how that will
work at this moment.
Right now we are talking about, Is it possible?
What will it achieve? Can we achieve what we need to
achieve with the current setup that we do have? And
so I am meeting with them and weighing the pros and
cons of how we can move forward, [and] if it can move
forward, Mr. Speaker. So that is not to say that it is a
foregone conclusion, it is to say that it is being di scussed. We will contin ue to discuss this feasibility and
we will continue with our school transformations that
are already in train, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the BermudaFirst
team for their report. It is far from perfect, but it does
represent the current stat e of data in a way that the
common person on the street can comprehend. Of
course, Mr. Speaker, as Minister, I am confident that
we are already headed in the right direction with our
Plan 2022, and our plans to reform public school ed ucation, but I also do think that the BermudaFirst report
is useful, and [I] suggest that those who have not had
a chance to read it, pick up a copy and read it thoroughly.
In the coming months, Mr. Speaker, we will
discuss some of these recommendations. And I am
encouraged by this report and what I have said today.
It will have all of us thinking and re- evaluating what is
2664 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly required of us to contribute to making sure education
gets to the point that our students deserve, Mr.
Speaker.
I want those who are stuck in the old mode of
thinking, of standing on the sideline and lobbing gr enades, and making useless comments that will not
help us move forward to reconsider that strategy and
come over to us, Mr. Speaker, so we can all hold
hands, move forward, and get education to where it
needs to be, where it deserves to be, and where our
students require it to be. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to rise to make
sure that I was recorded in this debate. This Berm udaFirst report was commissioned underneath my
hand. The committee was appointed and they did
yeoman’s service. And I want to be on record thanking
them for the work of which they ha ve done.
The Ministers of the Government who have
been presenting thus far and the Ministers of the
Government who will present [later on] have all looked
at these items, have examined these items and can
report on the things that are already in progress by
this Government and the things that are under consideration. It is important to note that when this was
formed I did say that I did not want any politicians on
this and I wanted it to be free of fear from political i nterference.
The report is good. And I want to thank the
persons who put the report together and I want to e ncourage Bermudians who have not read it, [to read]
not just the summary, but the entirety of the report. As
some Ministers have said, the committee continues to
work on a number of initiatives with the Government
and will continue to engage them. And I want to thank
the Executive Committee, specifically Chairman Mr.
Philip Butterfield for his continuing work and effort on
this. It is a great benefit to Bermuda. And those persons are ow ed, [by] this country and this House, its
gratitude. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Okay. Any other Member wish to
speak?
No other Member?
Minister Wilson?

Hon. Kim N. Wilson: Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by joining the
chorus as just presented by the Honourable Premier
with respect to thanking the members of BermudaFirst
for providing their valuable resources, their time, their
intellectual capital, their attention, and their commi tment to service in the production of this report. As has been stated already by some of my
ministerial colleagues there are a number of recommendations that are contained in this report that the
Government is exploring. We are still in engagement
with some of the working groups, a nd I would just like
to provide a little bit of commentary with respect to the
comments that were in this report, particularly as it
relates to the Ministry of Health.
Mr. Speaker, overall the scope of the health
care working group comprised five key them es. And
from those themes, Mr. Speaker, there were some 35
recommendations. In fact, if you look at the five key
themes, they broke them up . . . they had headings for
the recommendations, and I have gone through them
and actually effectively counted and addressed all of
those individually, which is why we come up with 35.
And of those 35 recommendations, Mr. Speaker, 23 of
those, or 66 per cent of those, are fully supported by
the Ministry. In fact, a large number of those recommendations are already being advanced by the Mini stry and were being advanced prior to the Berm udaFirst report and are still being completed. So, again,
I would like to thank those persons who were a part of
the BermudaFirst team that put together this particular
report.
Mr. Speaker, as it states in the report, the five
key themes that were identified as being required to
improve the health care delivery system —and I am
just actually going to paraphrase from the report, Mr.
Speaker —are as follows:

Go ahead.

Hon. Kim N. Wilson: Thank you.
Quality, finance payment reform and informatics integration, regulatory reform, universal coverage
and preventative health, and long- term care.
There were a number of key themes that resonated to me that were part of the report. In particular,
as I said, Mr. Speaker, I am going to concentrate my
brief submissions on the area of health. And the few
key themes that resonated, first and foremost, Mr.
Speaker . . . it indicated in the report that the position
that the Government also shares (which the Berm udaFirst report states) is that access to basic health
care without undue financial burden is a human right.
And that is the position that this Government also
shares. We have made that announcement over and
over again, and it forms the basis of the objectives
that we have right now, Mr. Speaker, as it relates to
health reform.
Mr. Speaker, the report also indicated, which
we have heard in this Honourable House on several
occasions, that there are over $700 million that are
spent on healt h care and [which] is driven by unconstrained utilisation of health resources. We have a
high prevalence of chronic disease. The Honourable
and Learned Member who took his seat a few m oments ago spoke to that. The rate of nonBermuda House of Assembly communicable chronic diseases is also a reliable pr edictor as it relates to the future of our care costs and
our expenses.
Mr. Speaker, albeit there were five key
themes that came from the Current State Summaries, I would like to spend my few moments this evening
speaking specificall y about key issue number four,
which is “universal coverage and preventative health.”
Let’s look at preventative health first, Mr. Speaker.
Regrettably, and you have heard me speak about this
previously, we have some very sobering statistics. Over 75 per c ent of our adult population are overweight or obese, 35 per cent of adults have chronic
noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, heart di sease, and kidney disease, 54 per cent of our adult
population have one or two risk factors already for
chronic disease, such as smoking, low vegetable and
fruit intake, inactivity, overweight, or raised and el evated blood pressure, and 12 per cent of our adult
population have diabetes.
Mr. Speaker, we spend on average $11,336
per annum per person on our health care cost. Mr.
Speaker, $78 million, which represents 10 per cent of
our health care costs, is spent on two preventable
conditions. Our health system does not get value for
money, Mr. Speaker. We are the third most -highest
expensive health care system in the OECD, yet we
are ranked 13
th in life expectancy. So for what we are
paying in our health care costs, Mr. Speaker, we
should be living forever! Our health care costs consume, Mr. Speaker, 11.5 per cent of our GDP [gross
domestic product].
Mr. Speaker, 20 per cent of our adult popul ation—this is extremely sobering to me and no doubt to
many of my colleagues —are either underinsured or
uninsured. Mr. Speaker, that would represent (of that 20 per cent) 91 per cent of those persons are non -
white. Mr. Speaker, this Gover nment is committed to
improving our health and making health care more
affordable and accessible to all, in particular that 20 per cent that I have just spoken about. However, in
order to do this, in order to make health care more
affordable and accessible to everyone, we have to
look at how we pay for this health care. That is why,
Mr. Speaker, the Government made the decision to
fundamentally reform the basic health insurance plan
and to provide it through a unified system whereby all
residents in Bermuda will be part of the Bermuda
Health Plan which will offer core benefits.
Now, Mr. Speaker, the Government consulted
previously on how our country should organise the
financing of health care. And you have heard me
speak about this as a matter of record here in this
Honourable Chamber, that back in 2012 there was a
health financing reform group that was commissioned
under the Honourable Minister Zane De Silva. That
group was made up of many persons representing
stakeholders in our community including insur ers,
medical profession, unions, non- profit charities, and the like. And they met together under the distinct
pleasure of getting to work with Professor Marc Roberts, who was a health economist. He has passed
away now, Mr. Speaker, but he was from Harvard
University and assisted many, many other jurisdictions with respect to health financing reform.
They got together and they produced a report,
Mr. Speaker, and again, this is after a lot of in depth discussion and consultation. They produced a report
in De cember 2012 and they looked at all of the health
options that exist in other jurisdictions and they came
down to two options. And, again, I would like to fast -
forward, Mr. Speaker, thanking the Health Financing
Reform Stakeholders Consultation group, which were
commissioned last fall who also looked at that report, went back to their constituent bodies to say, What f inancing model do you think would be best suited for
Bermuda? particularly bearing in mind what our constituency group says. And they helped to provide perspective to the Government to help inform our dec ision, Mr. Speaker, which was announced August of
this year, as to how Bermuda would move forward
insofar as financing our health care.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure you would agree with
me that we need a sustainable platform for a patient -
centred care model that will help to improve outcomes. We have already heard this evening from Honourable Members that, regrettably, we have some
very, very sobering statistics as it relates to noncommunicable chronic diseases and our health outcomes. We have to take steps to help to improve
them. And that also includes being responsible and
addressing healthier choices.
Mr. Speaker, that sustainable platform will a lso need to contain a decent benefit package that w ill
allow us to keep healthy and stay healthy. Additional
benefits, Mr. Speaker, would also need to be available
through private insurance. So there will always be a
need for supplemental insurance to be offered in Bermuda, and this is part of a broader reform that will
also address the other drivers of health cost, which we
know exist. And that includes fee levels, co- pays, and
utilisation.
Mr. Speaker, in addition to that, this is part of
a broader commitment to make Bermuda healthier
through prevention and healthy living. Mr. Speaker,
these reforms that I just spoke of all confirm the Government’s commitment to improving our health and
making health care more affordable. Now, why are we doing this? And, again, you will see in the Berm udaFirst report, th ey said we need to look at addressing
universal coverage and preventative health. And the Government is doing this because we have all heard
the stories. And I have said this previously, Mr.
Speaker, in other forums and it warrants repetition.
We have all heard stories of families who
have been driven into debt because their insurance
coverage ran out, or because they were uninsured to begin with, or they were unemployed Bermudians un2666 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly able to afford health insurance and they were relying
on hopes and prayer s that they do not get sick before
they get another hustle or another job that will provide
them with health insurance. We have heard stories of
seniors who have to choose between medication and
food or who go to the pharmacist and whisper, How
much is it for seven tablets? And then they go home
and cut the tablets to try to make them last.
We have heard stories where a young mother
who has had to choose between paying her child’s
care and insurance, or parents who have denied their own medical needs to ensure that their children’s
health needs are covered. We have heard stories of
neighbours, colleagues, friends, who come down with
an unexpected illness and are left with mounting med-ical bills who are forced to find money to pay for those
bills by bake sal es and GoFundMe pages. The stories
of health care professionals who are desperately tr ying to assist their patients and are forced to try to fi gure out how to provide for them . . . and for their patients (excuse me) who cannot afford the lab tests or
the diagnostic imaging or the medicine or the other
treatments that they desperately need.
Our health care system is broken, Mr. Speaker. It is too expensive, and Bermudian families are
struggling to survive. And we were elected to change
that, Mr. Speaker, wh ich is consistent with, if I draw a
reference to what the BermudaFirst report says in one
of their five key element themes, universal coverage
and preventative care. So, Mr. Speaker, this is exactly
why the Government has embarked on this next stage
toward a new health care system that will help Bermudians to become healthier and reduce the cost of
health care, thereby making it more affordable and
accessible to all, hence, the universal coverage, Mr.
Speaker.
We believe that everyone should have better
access to services like regular doctor’s appointments,
primary care, and the essential medicine that they
need, particularly in cases where they have chronic
diseases. And coverage for screening, Mr. Speaker, is
also critical, and early intervention, as well as proper
management of chronic diseases. We have heard
over and over again, the high instances of noncommunicable chronic disease, and we need to be
able to have proper management and to assist those patients so that they can manage more effectively
those diseases.
The Bermuda Health Plan 2020, Mr. Speaker,
is how we will provide better coverage for all of Bermuda. And this journey is one that we believe in, Mr.
Speaker, and we believe that the public must also par-ticipate in this journey and share thei r views, which is
why the consultation period started on August 9
th, in
fact, and it will continue to run, the public consultation, until December the 8
th. And we are encouraging all
members of the public to look at the consultation document and provide their input. Because the consult ation document is looking at what benefits the people of Bermuda would like to see, at what cost point, the i ssues concerning co- pay and the like. And that is really, really critical, because this will be something that will b e made available and it will be pooled for all
Bermuda residents. So that is why we are expecting
and hoping that all Bermudian residents will partic ipate in the consultation, Mr. Speaker.
And, Mr. Speaker, in addition, this is not just
about trying to keep Bermudians healthier, because we know that this is going to help to decrease our
health care costs. We have already heard about the instances of non- communicable diseases, people are
living longer, we have got an ageing population and
regrettably we hav e an ageing population who are
living longer sicker. And that is going to break our sy stem. So we have to take steps to provide more pr evention. And the core benefits, the basic core benefits
that are looking to be included in the Bermuda Health
Plan 2020 will address things like prevention, Mr.
Speaker.
The current Standard Health Benefit that we
all pay into by law, which is part of everyone’s insurance package, almost 95 per cent of that is for inpatient and outpatient care at the hospital. Very little for
preventative care. And we need to look at a better
core package that allows for prevention. The World
Health Organization has stated that any benefit pac kage that is offered to its citizens must include preventative and primary care. And that is what w e are seeking to do, Mr. Speaker, because we submit that this
will help make Bermudians healthier and keep them
healthier.
So, Mr. Speaker, in addition to this, in terms of
containing the health costs, our health care costs, as I have said, are not sustai nable. We need to make ourselves healthier as a community and as individuals.
And that also includes taking personal responsibility.
And I know some people do not like to hear that. But
we also have to be responsible for how we treat our bodies and what we eat and how we consume things
and exercise and the like because, as I said, $78 mi llion is spent on two preventable diseases every year, 10 per cent of our whole health care expenses. They
are preventable diseases because of lifestyle. So we
also, I think as leaders, should recognise that we can
also take steps to try to eradicate the high instances
of non- communicable diseases that are largely pr eventable.
So, again, Mr. Speaker, with respect to good
lifestyle choices, proper treatment, and investment in
ourselves, we can all age healthier and we can have
better qualities of life as well as have better health outcomes and prevent our health costs from skyroc keting and escalating, which we know is not sustain able.
So, Mr. Speaker, thank you for this time t his
afternoon, this evening, and I would like to end where I started which is by acknowledging the great work of the BermudaFirst. They did this gratis. They put t oBermuda House of Assembly gether their intellectual capital and their time and their
commitment and their hard work and dedication to
Bermuda Inc., and by doing so produced this report
with a number of recommendations which, as I said,
with respect to the health portions of, we support. Many of them are already in situ, many of them are
progressing, and we look forward to continuing our
work with BermudaFirst and more importantly, our
work on behalf of the people of Bermuda, particularly
as it relates to helping to keep them healthier. Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, thank you, so
much.
The BermudaFirst report, of course, is the
subject of this debate. And this is sort of the second
iteration of this concept. We know there was a prev ious report, some years ago. You had then Opposition Leader Kim Swan and others who were a part of that
group. So the Government made a decision to rei nvigorate this approach to have a committee called
Berm udaFirst again, to go back and do an asses sment of where Bermuda is at and where they, through
their collective deliberations, can begin to offer some
recommendations for a pathway by which we can get
Bermuda fit and proper, prepared, to meet the cha llenges of the 21
st century.
In the Executive Summary, I took heart by the
fact that they did acknowledge that one of the key
challenges Bermuda has, has been the rampant
growth of income inequality in the country. That has
been a phenomenon that has actually r esonated
globally, particularly in developed and even, dare I
say, western countries, to such an extent that it is
even roiling politics. If you look at what is happening in
the US, if you look at what is happening in Europe,
income inequality —its rampant growth, its extraordinary growth— has had a major impact on the levels of
unrest that we are seeing in many parts of the world.
We know in Bermuda that we also have a
very ruinous cost of living. That too has been driven
by the extraordinary levels of inco me inequality that
we have been subjected to. I was happy that the r eport acknowledged the destructive role that it is pla ying, not only in Bermuda, but globally.
And they then focused on wages. Clearly, to
use two words which have been resonating here over the last few weeks, they too recognise that the current
status quo is not sustainable for Bermuda. So, how do
we deal with things like income inequality? Certainly, income inequality signifies a maldistribution of income
within a respective jurisdiction, in this case, we are
talking about Bermuda. It has a major and destructive
impact upon those at the bottom of income distribu-tion, low income earners, lower middle- income ear ners. And that is why, as they cite here, we must have
equal pay (and I am quotin g) for equal work .
Today, earlier, we saw an amendment come
with respect to ensuring that persons who work in
Bermuda who may be foreigners who are on work permits, have to start paying into our occupational
pension scheme. Because if they do not do that, what
will continue to happen, which has happened over the
last 20 years, Mr. Speaker, we will find that those indi-viduals, and the employers who hired them, will be
benefitting at the expense of Bermudian workers, particularly in hospitality, restaurants, landscaping, [and]
construction. I can go on, there are a few more occ upations. It has become so prevalent.
Why would I want to hire a Bermudian —I
have said this before in this House— if I can get away
with hiring a low -cost foreign worker and do so by e nsuring that the wage bill that I will have to pay for that
worker continues to decline, to drop. They call it a
race to the bottom. The big loser has been non -
college educated Bermudian workers, and, dare I say,
particularly, black Bermudian workers within that ca tegory because they proliferate at those levels. These
are the challenges that we have to face.
So, by eliminating that, by ensuring that foreign workers are [paying] into our occupational pe nsion scheme and that the employers must pay that, it
removes that perverse incentive not to hire Bermudians—at least one them. There are some others. And
that was one of our key recommendations in the living wage Joint Select Committee that we had and which
made recommendations to this House. As we know
now, w ithin the Ministry of Labour, under Minister Lo vitta Foggo, they are now working to establish the
Wage Commission which will then lead to that commission determining a methodology for calculating the
future statutory wage rates, both for a minimum and
then a living wage, and making those recommendations, hopefully, fairly soon. I suspect in 2020.
But getting back to this theme that there are
no more easy answers left and that the current status quo is not sustainable, this report goes a long way, I
think, in jumpstarting this very important debate. So,
for example, we know that there is no growth in international business, to the extent that it is providing jobs
that would analogous to what was occurring in the
1980s, 1990s, and early to mid- 2000s. Job grow th has
stagnated. For example, Mr. Speaker, we also know
that one of the biggest growth sectors within insur-ance and global reinsurance, the industry of insurance, has been the ILS sector, i nsurance- linked sec urities. Bermuda has become a major hub, if not one of
the leading jurisdictions for that financial service—that
financial product, I should say. But yet, we did not see
the growth of employment in that sector despite Bermuda being at the forefront of it. So that also speaks
to the role that technology is playing in inhibiting job
growth on Island, particularly in areas within our finan2668 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly cial services sector. So we have a major challenge to
address here.
And this report, I think, comes at an opportune
time. Now, not all of us will find favour with everything
in the report. I thought that their comments about i mmigration, for example, were not sensitive enough to
the very real damage that has been done to Bermudians, particularly black Bermudians, with respect to the
whole immigration debate over the last f our or five
decades. Mr. Speaker, as you may know, if you read the book by one of our significantly effective and great leaders in this country, Dr. Ewart Brown, only recently,
he says that in 2007’s election, roughly 52 per cent of
white registered voters were foreign born, comprising
a majority of all white voters —in 2007. I do not know
what it is now; that was 12 years ago. I suspect that that has not changed much.
Now, if one wants to find out why you have
this historic antipathy toward liberalising imm igration,
the simple answer is that many black Bermudians of
my parents’ generation and of my generation are still suffering from the scars of having an immigration r egime over the last four or five years which was weaponised to marginalise them, both with in the
economy, the private sector economy, and politically.
That is just a reality. That is why we are not seeing a
buy-in on the part of black Bermudians for opening the
floodgates of immigration.
Now, that does not mean that there are not
compelling reasons, logical reasons, why we should
not open those floodgates
. . . or, not floodgates, but
to liberalise immigration. We can make very cogent
and sober arguments about the need. Bermuda’s
population is ageing, it is over 44 years per age, I
mean, per median. The median age of a Bermudian is
44 years of age. It is an ageing population. We know
the outcomes associated with that, and they are not
pretty. The question is, How can we do this in a way
that addresses that very real hurt, that sense of di splacem ent and marginalisation around this issue that
Bermuda’s black community has? Because failure to
do so means that we are not going to be able then to
move to have this rational discussion about immigr ation and how we can make it work for everybody.
The question around education. Clearly, the
Minister indicated that the recommendation surrounding the establishing of an Education Authority is not off the table, although he assures that it is not going to be
one that mimics what occurred with the Bermuda
Tourism Authority. I do not know what that looks like,
but I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Everybody wants to see education improved. How can
we achieve that is the question. And how can we fina lly achieve parity between a largely publi c school ed ucation, a public educational system, and a private e ducation system which has the type of achievements
and progress in the way that it has developed st udents that has been laudable, to some degree? We need to ensure that this gap, which to
some degree is also racial in Bermuda, can be closed.
And so I am going to take an open mind about this. I
am not one who believes in privatisation of education,
but I am prepared to say, Look, we are at a point now
where we all need to look at different ways to try to
achieve a progressive end. So, I am not going to necessarily have a knee- jerk reaction against it.
The Minister of Health, Kim Wilson, ably
pointed out the fact that our health system is broken
and that we must address it. Those statistics wer e
sobering, absolutely! And so this report, I think, comes
at a right time. I have often said here on this floor, Mr.
Speaker, that too often too many of our leaders, both
in terms of the private and public sector , still want to
party as if it is 1999, to paraphrase a song by Prince,
the musician. I have said that before. But that era is over, and so we have got to grasp the future now, be
innovative in our approach to modernising so much of
what Bermuda represents, to make it fit for purpose
for the 21
st century. This is what this report is seeking
to achieve. It is not perfect, but we cannot allow per-fect to be the enemy of the good, to paraphrase President Obama who, while not coming up with that
phrase, certainly made it his own. And so we need to
put our shoulders to the wheel to ensure that we are
going to be able to bequeath to our children and our
grandchildren a Bermuda that we can be proud of. The Health Minister herself said that in terms
of health the system is broken. Well, in so many areas
in Bermudian life . . . and you know, Bermudians want
to take a knee- jerk reaction to this, because how dare
we say this. There are many areas in Bermudian life
that are broken. I think we have a responsibility to ad-dress that. So I just wanted to thank the authors and
the members of the BermudaFirst committee for the
work they have done. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
We now recognise Minister Caines. Minister,
you have the floor.
Hon. Wayne Caines: Thank you, Mr. Speak er.
Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to
look at the BermudaFirst report, specifically, the recommendations that have been made with reference to
immigration. Let me say from the outset that I would
like to thank the BermudaFirst team for the hard work
that they have put in there. They have done yeoman’s
service. They have not been paid. They have been working for a considerable period of time on this r eport. It is reflected in the work that they have done.
We have had a chance as a Cabinet to mull
over the report. I have met with specific members of the BermudaFirst team with reference to immigration
on more than one occasion, and so we knew the tr ajectory that they were going in. As a matter of fact,
before the report was completed, when they gave us
the first alliteration of their leanings, we were able to


Bermuda House of Assembly put a number of the things that they were recommending into place far before the report came out. In other
words, we do understand that there are some golden
nuggets contained within the report that are not only
beneficial for the members of the Progressive Labour Party, but indeed, will be beneficial for Bermuda as a
whole.
Having said that, I have had the opportunity to
break it down . . . well, let me just change tack, or
course, as I look at my colleague, Ben, for a second.
Mr. Speaker, we have been working on comprehensive immigration reform for just over a year, since I
have been the chairman of this particular body. And it
has been a really, really rewarding experience. It has
been challeng ing. We have bumped our heads. We
have thumped our feet and we still do not have an
answer to a number of the questions that are posed.
We thought at one point in time that we had some legislation that was ready to be tabled and when we went
into the room and we discussed it with our prospective
caucuses and we discussed it with each other, we just
could not find the opportunity to bring that legislation
forward. And so we have been as a group, collectiv ely, and individually . . . it is clear that immigrati on is
something that we have to pay close attention to. It is something that is evocative. It is something that causes all to retreat into our perspective corners and look at it from the lens that affects us, that affects our bus iness interests, that affec ts our families.
What is clear from this report is that there are
some gems, when it talks about talent acquisition and
the immigration policy, and there are some analogies
that are used in the report. And the report highlights, Mr. Speaker, that Bermuda has a limited population, a
declining birth rate, an increased rate of senior cit izens, and we need expatriate workers in Bermuda. It
gives an analogy of Bermuda’s national football team
and the importance of having people with exquisite
talent, a striker ( if you please) on your team. It says
that we must look at the challenges that we have and the direction that we want to go into, and make imm igration policies and procedures within that entity and
that organisation that benefit Bermuda, because we need exp atriate workers and we need a significant
change in trajectory going forward.
I actually believe that, indeed, to be the case.
I believe that to be the case. But that without . . . and
this is where we are light, and I will not criticise this
report, but I must highlight something. That without
understanding the social dynamic in Bermuda, it is
limited, or it is myopic, at best. And so, whenever considering sweeping changes and reforms around imm igration, it has to be put into the context of the social
construct of our country. And if we do not do that, we
are destined not to understand why we have some of
the challenges that we have in our country.
I think it is very important for us to do som ething that we have not done up until this point, which is to h ave the honest conversation. When the conver-sations are taking place, we are having them in silos.
So, the business community talks about the needs of the business community. And they are saying we
need more work permits, we need the opportunities to
get o ur work permits faster, we need the opportunity
for the process to be more transparent, and we need
our staff members on Island immediately. We need
the policies and procedures in the Department of I mmigration to be more swift. You need to be less xenophob ic; you need to allow us to come to Bermuda.
The Bermudian is saying we need a place of
primacy in Bermuda. We need the opportunity to have
a job that allows us to matriculate, to have the same
development and deportment as our expatriate colleagues. We w ant the opportunity to be a part of this
economy.
There are people who are saying, well, we
need to look at education. And if we have an educ ation system that needs to be worked on, we need to focus on the education part of our system so that
when our young people get to the right age, they are
in a position where they can benefit from the econo-my.
We look at all of these things and put all of
these things together. We are not having the conver-sations in the right silos. Because if you are the bus iness co mmunity and you are simply seeing it from the
business lens, well, you have that perspective only. And if you are a Bermudian and you cannot see
where you fit into the bigger picture, and you are not
focused on what the business community needs or
what the working community needs, then you are only
seeing it from your perspective.
And I think one of the things that I have
learned with comprehensive immigration reform is that
we have to have the open discourse about what are
the challenges with reference to Bermuda. Where are
we with reference to unemployment, Bermudians being prepared to be in the job place? Where are we with reference to companies giving legitimate opportunities for Bermudians to matriculate through those
companies? Where are we with Bermudians being
ready and fit for purpose in these organisations?
And there are some times when we need to
have this conversation about talent acquisition. That was a heading in the report —talent acquisition, and
what we need to do to attract the best talent and talent
to Bermuda. I believe that there are a number of
things that we can do to attract talent. But the emphasis cannot be only on attracting talent from overseas.
Number one, I will admit that we need talent from overseas. But, number two, I would admit that we
need to start investing in the talent that we have on
Island, developing the talent that we have on Island.
And those things cannot be looked at separately.
They have to be able to look at the Bermudian when
they see themselves a part of this picture, and the expatriate has to be able to see that they need, and it
is indeed, a symbiotic relationship.
2670 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly When talking about comprehensive immigr ation reform, they speak about the processing of work
permits and making it easier. Well, there is a phased
approach to identifying work permit processes and the procedures. That is something, Mr. Speaker, that when we heard the direction that the BermudaFirst
was going into, we met. The d epartment has hired the
services of KPMG. They have gone into the depar tment. They have put together a plan. They have
worked with the staff. They have looked at where the
department can be made more efficient. And they have been working together. And they have a plan to
make and identify in the not -too-distant future process
improvements within the department.
They are putting together and working on a
digitised system. Immigration reform, Mr. Speaker, has a number of parts to it: looking at the work permit
and looking at the applications; identifying and impl ementing process improvement pieces (in other words,
looking at and vetting applications); renewing applic ations; key operational matrices; electronic payment options; improved application forms; employer and
employee portals; segmentation of applications to
identifying th ose that need more scrutiny, standar dised Immigration Board review packages. And so,
there were some challenges about how the process
takes place and how we do it.
And so, we are putting in place a streamlined
process for looking at applications, how appl ications
are processed. And when that is implemented, we
believe the process in the department will work more
smoothly and people will be able to deliver that which
is needed within that process.
But there again, when you talk about immigr ation reform, that is a part. And it is not the evocative
part. So, when we are talking about the processes
and the procedures and those pieces, that is a part of
it. So, to a person who is looking at immigration r eform, if they are an international business, this is wher e they find and this is where they look and this is
what they want us to do differently and do better. The
processes and the procedures . . . those are working.
And we believe that is making a significant effort to
make the processes and the procedures bet ter and
easier.
When we are looking at talent acquisition, Mr.
Speaker, that is where we have to do some work.
That is where we have to work with the Education D epartment and Workforce Development, talk with our
unions, have a conversation with the people in our
public. This is what a day's salary looks like, and this
is what a day's work looks like. The people of Bermuda are working to a standard in this part. We are below standard in this part. And this is how we raise to
that standard so employers and employees are happy
with the flow of work, they are happy with the pay of work, and people in our country, both employers and
employees, can see the value that they have for each other. And that is something that I believe we have to
work on as a country.
The part that we are struggling with during
comprehensive immigration reform is the mixed- status
family piece. We have for a very long time in Bermuda
had the conversations (and I am looking at Ben, who
sits on our team). And we have gone through this, and
we have been working. And we are looking at ways of
making Bermuda and this process fair, allowing people who were born in Bermuda and their children who
were born in Bermuda . . . giving them an opportunity
to become or to have their immigration status r egularised.
And when you look at that and you say, You
know what? We are looking at mixed- status families.
And we are looking at, how does an individual who is born a Bermudian, who has children overseas, and
the Bermudian who has children overseas, looki ng at
allowing those Bermudian children, those children
who are born to Bermudian parents overseas, to be
able to come to Bermuda and have their immigration
status regularised, which is equally as important. In other words, Bermudians who have adopted chil dren
or had children overseas coming home to Bermuda
and having their immigration status regularised. And
that is a huge part of it, as well —Bermudians who are
overseas being able to come to Bermuda, have their immigration status regularised and take their rightful
place in Bermuda.
Automatically, there is a view that we are not
looking out for the rights of Bermudians. And I believe that is the misstep. The basis of this legislation is to allow Bermudians to have the opportunity to have
their immigration status regularised. But we were
forced as a committee, looking at . . . or when I was
looking at the BermudaFirst report , understanding the
BermudaFirst report, and looking at what I believed
the lacunas or the holes or the opportunities for
changes are . . . well, what is the average Bermudian
concerned about? Where does the fear come from?
First of all, it is unfair to believe that the ner vousness or the apprehension that a number of Ber-mudians have, is misplaced. I think in immigration, the
process of i mmigration, how immigration has been
rolled out, what was done over a number of years has
just been unfair. Bermudians were not given a place
of primacy in their own country for such a long period
of time. The very thought of other people being given
further rights in Bermuda scares Bermudians to death.
And so, they cannot even get to the position of the
BermudaFirst [recommendation].
The BermudaFirst recommendation wants us
to have the discussion clinically only. So, if you were
to look at the BermudaFirs t report . . . and this is not a
criticism of the report. This is the conversation that I
believe we should have. The BermudaFirst report has
made some suggestions about necessary things that
we need to do in Bermuda. That is not lost to me. That


Bermuda House of Assembly is not lo st in our committee. That is not lost on the
right-thinking Bermudians.
But it must and cannot ignore the social d ilemma or the social construct in Bermuda that has
made Bermudians fearful, that has made them ret icent to this process. And until we have the convers ation that explains, that shows, that pays homage to
what we can do, who we are and how we give each
other a place of primacy in the country, Bermudians
will never buy into this. When people say a place of
primacy in their own country, it has a negative connotation to it. It automatically [implies] that Bermudians
do not want foreigners and they do not want them [to
come] into Bermuda. I do not believe that. Bermudians want to be in their country where they matter, where legislation reflects the fact that they are indeed
Bermudian and that they should have opportunities in
their country.
And so, when people are struggling and they
are having difficulties making ends meet, and we start to use words like “ pathways to status,” and use the
opportunity, and we give off numbers of people who
are coming to Bermuda in the thousands, automatical-ly a wall goes up. Because what does a Bermudian
see? Their mind hearkens back to the days of land
qualifications, of unfair hiring practices, of quotas,
where police officers were brought in from abroad,
where prison officers were brought in from abroad.
And we, oftentimes . . . and this is to the chagrin of the
business community. They want us just to get over it
and move on.
Well, the committee that sits together, they
have to look at the BermudaFirst report . They have to
listen to the business community. They have to listen
to the working community. They have to listen to all
segments of Bermuda in order to make sure that we
make balanced decisions that benefit all of Bermuda
And I believe that, in order for this to happen,
BermudaFirst is absolutely right, we have to take a
survey of our country, we have to look at where we
are, we need expatriate workers in Bermuda. That is a
fact. But the conversation has to be deeper than that,
Mr. Speaker. We have to look at how education plans
work for our kids and how the education system is
made stronger.
We have to have honest conversations with
Mr. and Mrs. Bermuda. How do we make sure that we
are prepared for opportunity ? How do we make sure
that we are educated correctly? How do we make
sure that we give an honest day's work for an honest
day's pay? How do we make sure that we are pr epared in all segments of our community?
The business community have to make an
overt commitment to training and developing Berm udians. So, a Bermudian has to look in that company,
and they have to see, from the receptionist right up to the C -suite, an opportunity for them to develop and to
be trained in that organisation. Because if they do not
see the opportunity for them to train and to be deve l-oped in that organisation, they throw it all out as just
lip service.
We are looking at the opportunity to look at
the work permit policy within the Department of Imm igration. We believe that must be addressed. We believe that there must be a test of English as a foreign
language. Everyone who is a customer -facing indivi dual, we believe must have a test for English as a foreign language for people who work in Bermuda. And
that is not to keep people out. There are a number of
people that we hear where people are coming to Ber-muda, and they are not able to speak English. We
believe that it is necessary for us to have specific
tests.
Most recently, as a part of immigration reform,
Mr. Speaker, we did something where our compliance
team sent an email. They had a hotline where people called in, and they reported when people were wor king outside of their work permit. And to many people,
they thought that was alarmist. They thought these
were, you know, almost Gestapo- like tactics.
I thought that we would see a few people.
Without giving numbers, it has been significant. We have seen a number of people coming in and [giving]
information of people working outside of their work
permits in the private sector, i n the working communities, in the farming industry, in the hairdressing indus-try, in the cleaning industry, in the hair and barbering industry, where we are learning about several people
who are working outside of what their work permit
says. And what does that mean? That means it repr esents an opportunity for them to be paid less. That
means an opportunity for them to be exploited. But it
also is an opportunity for Bermudians to be kept away
from opportunities. That is also something that we
have to look at. Test of English as a foreign language
to make sure that people are working in Bermuda,
looking at the opportunity to make sure that people
working outside of their work permit are actually held to account for that.
Also, looking at the work permit poli cy, what
does that look like? So, if we walk this back down the hill, what does that mean? That means comprehensive immigration reform. Everybody wants to focus on
the two parts that are most controversial or most sexy or most evocative. In other words, we are going to
focus on mixed- status family or we are going to focus
on getting expatriates to Bermuda.
We believe that, number one, we have not
found that magic bullet to fix this, and it remains a work in progress. But we have realised that we have to look at the processes and the procedures in the
Immigration Department. How is the organisation run?
We went to Business Bermuda. They were
able to put aside some money. And then, we got
KPMG, and they went into the Department of Imm igration with Dr. Ming and our team. And they said,
This is what is going on in the Immigration Depar tment with processes and procedures. And we can
2672 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly make the department stronger by doing this thing. We
can do this with our processes. We are looking at the
opportunity to just tot ally ramp the IT with a digitised
system within the department, looking at amalgamating the Immigration operating system and the Cus-toms Immigration system at the airport and making
them into one system, looking at eventually, Mr.
Speaker, getting an e- gate when the new airport
opens. And you have seen the e- gates when you go
into London and what that means. That is a part of
comprehensive immigration reform.
Comprehensive immigration reform also
means looking at, how do we make the compliance
element of i mmigration stronger? Test of English as a
foreign language, making sure that people are wor king within their work permit, looking at the opportunity
for us to make sure that everyone has the right opportunity to develop in Bermuda by looking at the work
permit policy, and now, looking at the mixed- status
family. Well, the mixed -status family is about also gi ving Bermudians a place of primacy —yes, giving Bermudians a place of primacy in their own country.
Are we still working on it? It remains a work in
progress. We have no dates to say that this is what is
going to happen next. But I can say that when I look at
the BermudaFirst report , Mr. Speaker, we are going in
the right direction. We have not looked at this from a
standpoint of it being myopic. In other words, we rea lise that there are going to be certain segments of Bermuda that disagree with every element of what we
are doing. But we believe that the forefront cannot
be—cannot be —bringing or making sure people have
jobs. That cannot be—that cannot be —the baseline.
The baseline has to be that Bermudians have oppor-tunities in Bermuda. We have to undergird that with
Bermudians understanding the dynamics of international business and what they bring to Bermuda, the
importance that they play in our economy and how we
all can grow together to make Bermuda stronger. That
is a key element to this.
I believe the four phases are very important
for us to understand. As I read comprehensive imm igration reform, I can look at us going over and over and over it again. The Act was written in the 1950s,
Mr. Speaker. And we realise that we are trying to cor-rect this in a year. Anything short of tearing up this entire Act and starting all over again from scratch, we
are constantly going to be working to put this together.
I believe that the report understands a part of it. And I
agree with it in the main. Yes, we need more foreign
workers in Bermuda. Yes, we need Bermudians to
understand. But I will say this, and I will say this r espectfully. There are some social dynamics to our
country that have to be understood, that have to be
discussed. And we must work together to make it
happen.
I do not believe, and I have not spoken on
immigration . . . (and I see that I have seven minutes left) I have not spoken on immigration and what we have been doing in a long time. And the reason for
that is that the team is working night and day, bipart isan, to make this happen. When we take it back to our
respective caucuses, there are a lot of disagreements.
But there is work. There are peo ple trying to put it t ogether. We are looking at talking. The BermudaFirst
report is confirmation that we are going in the right
direction. But I believe that when we sit at the table,
we must —we must —ensure that Bermudians have a
place of primacy in their country, that the legislation
does not forget that this is our country.
We have to look at business. We have to give
them the opportunity to develop in Bermuda. They have to be given the opportunity to grow, because that
is how we are making our living. I believe that. Co mprehensive immigration reform will remain a work in progress. I believe it is time for a deeper conversation, Mr. Speaker. The conversation that we need to have
is a long time coming. Every time I go to a forum,
there are people running to me, and they are telling
me horror stories of being unemployed or of their son
who has gone to university and is not able to get a job in Bermuda.
I go to the barbershop, and I talk to young
Bermudians. And they are not able to find work. And they are seeing young non -Bermudians working. And
they want to understand, how are we protecting them
and giving them opportunities in their own country. And we have to, whilst balancing the immigration r eform, show Bermudians that we indeed get it and we
will make sure that they can flourish in their own
homeland. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I also would like to thank the team
that put together this report. And I would like to thank
the Honourable Minister for opening a dialogue that
we actually started earlier today.
The Immigration Reform Committee has spent
a long time going through all of the steps that we have had to go through to deal with immigration. And there
has been a lot of kind of outside talk about how long it is taking. The issue is that, when you have a process
that has been going on since 1956, and we are looking at the reform —

We are looking at the reform of how
we are going to, in essence, put Band-A ids on
what immigration is going to look like, going forward—
this is not an easy process. The Minister has touched
on a lot of those points.
When we are sitting in that room, the discussion points are not just one- sided. So, you have to
take into consideration the scars that Bermudians
have, generations of Bermudians, the scars that they are carrying with them because of the immigration
decisions that were made in the past. Every decision
that we make and where we are today are based off
of a lot of those things that have happened historically to the people in Bermuda.
The difficulty is that when you try to make the
reform happen, you have to take that into consider ation at the same time as you have to take into consi deration where our economy is and the pressure that is coming from the opposite side, which is saying that they want more. So, when we are trying to balance that act, to know on one side, yes, we all understand
the position that the economy is in, and we also understand how important it is for us to attract people
from overseas, also to keep the people who are a lready here who are part of the economy. But we have to balance that with making sure that we are taking care of our own people. We have to make sure that
what we are doing is developing our people to be part
of this process.
And, as the Minister was saying, that takes
the education system, along with the changes that we are making with immigration and with . . . we are g oing to actually have to make sure that our people understand what it is going to take to be part of the economy now and the economy of the future. Some of the things that we have gotten away with we cannot do any longer. We used to be an economy that was built on hospitality. A lot of the houses and a lot of the
wealth in Bermuda for a lot of the people, even in this
room, came through the hospitality industry, a lot of people working hard for a lot of years to get to this point. Hospitality fell off. Tourism dropped off. And we
moved into the international business realm. But tour-ism was something that everybody could be involved
in.
What has happened is a lot of our people
have forgotten that this was a real option. And getting
involved with it . . . yes, there are going to be hours
that you might not like. There is going to be the pote ntial that you are going to have to work on holidays.
There is a different need when you are dealing with
tourism and hospitality than there is in international business or other jobs that you are doing. But we are
going to have to make sure that we educate our popu-lation on what is going to be needed in order for us to do that. We cannot accept what we are presently accepting . . . not from everybody. Because the narrative
is that Bermudians are lazy. We all know that is not true. But there are some of us who are not actually living up to the standard of Bermudians. They are not putting in the same effort as everybody else, and al-lowing the narrative to continue. Because when you
take off the week of your birthday, there might be 10
other people who actually are working hard, but they are going to be painted with the same brush because of your behaviour. The people who are not working hard are actually affecting all the rest of us. And that is
part of the conversation that we have on one side.
But on the flip side of that, we have a bus iness community that needs to understand that, histor-ically, all these things that have happened to the Ber-mudians are why we do not want to open the flood-gates. They have to understand that, yes, you have come to a small community, and you have done that
because there are opportunities for you. There is
money to be made. But you also have to take into consideration our culture, who we are. It is not a steamroll thing. You have to actually understand the balance, the balance that we are having to discuss
when we are in this committee.
So, there are two pieces to it. I took the Mini ster's position, because it was actually brought up in
the report, about using the national football team and the entire team being Bermudian. But there is an i nteresting thing. So, what you could have is, you have
got the team, all Bermudian. But, potentially, some of
the guys who actually were taking care of the field were non- Bermu dian. Maybe some of the people who
are providing the food for the team are non-Bermudian. Maybe the people who put the sponsor-ship on the jersey are non- Bermudian.
The issue with it is that we as a community
have to understand that all of those things are i mportant. So, we cannot get up here and just speak on one side. We have to understand that some of those people want to be on the same team as us. And we
have to understand that we are going to have to let
our guard down a little bit to allow them to be part of the team. We cannot continue to just ask them to pr ovide money and just ask them to support our initi atives, and at the same time not give them any seat at the table.
Because if you look in the report, and they talk
about the people who came to Bermuda not just, as it has been laid out, the white population that has come to Bermuda. There are some leaders in this country who came from other countries. A lot of the democr acy that is built in this country came from people who
came from another countr y. And that is what makes
us up. There are multiple people, even in this House,
who have members of their family who have come from somewhere else. So, we cannot close off that the potential for our country getting better is going to
2674 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report
B ermuda House of Assembly come from outside of the country. We cannot shut that
off.
That is the balancing act that we have conti nued to have in this committee. And it is a lot of hard
work. We bump heads a lot. But at the same time, I think we have started to move in a direction that, most importantly , we discussed today, [which] is that we
have to start to open this dialogue. And the Minister started it. I want to continue it. We have to open the dialogue of how we are going to do both sides of these things.
Yes, we need our economy to do better, and
we need to reach out and have the business comm unity understand that we need their help. But at the same time, we have to have them understand that with that help from a financial standpoint, there are some other pieces. We are going to have to make sure that our people are trained and have a proper
opportunity to have a seat at the table. It cannot be
that we are going to give you an opportunity to play on
that team, and at the end of the day we no longer can play. That is the main piece that we have to under-stand when it comes to immigration.
So, we have got to be careful that we [not] get
up and we only talk about the things that happened historically, because, yes, those are the scars. Those are the ones that are going to create the emotion. But we have to understand that this emotion we have to look at, Bermuda is in a really difficult spot right now. We have to reach out and ask for this help; and with
that, we know that this is the position that we are in.
But we are going to have to do it in a way t hat is co ntrolled, take our time and make sure that we are doing these things the right way so that future generations are not paying for the decisions that we make hastily when we are trying to make immigration reform happen. And with that, I take my seat .

Thank you, Mr. Deputy
Speaker.
I too would like to congratulate those who participated in BermudaFirst 2019, having had some ex-perience with BermudaFirst 2009 as a co- chairman.
And I will go back there to 2008 when it was struck. Then- Premier Dr. Ewart Brown, and myself as Opposition Leader, and key players during that time were
Mr. Don Kramer from the business community, who brought the business community to the table; in addi-tion to Mr. Phil Butterfield, who is now the Chairman of this report; and US Consul General, Mr. Gregory Sla yton. There is an important aspect of this report that
I would like to speak on, because the report does not just deal with immigration. It does not just deal with education. It does not just deal with health care. The BermudaFirst was brought about for the general state of Bermuda, which was caused by a very devastating
recession, global recession, for which the politics of
that era would have had the whole world believe that
the Progressive Labour Party was responsible. Bus inesses were making decisions, were leaving, and that on the heels of a booming economy in the 2000s that was unprecedented. And I declare my interest. I par-ticipated in those politics as well, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
That is what politics brings about.
I want to say that during that period of being a
co-chairman of BermudaFirst, and considering that
there was even denial amongst people that there was
a recession in Bermuda, I took that responsibility very seriously. I can put hand over heart . . . and I would
encourage persons to go back and look at the rec-ords. And you would see that the Opposition particip ation in that day carried the respect of that report, so much so that it did not spill over into the public d omain —no, not once. And that is important. Politics has
a place in BermudaFirst, going forward. And when I look at the conclusion . . . and the conclusion likened
Bermuda to a time of a hurricane. Oh, how wonderful it would be to live in that bubble forever, where ever ybody worked together. That is not the reality of Ber-muda.
And it is not the reality of Bermuda because
the Bermuda Inc. that Dr. David Saul used to speak about, and the Bermuda Inc. that people tend to refer to casually, could not become a reality tomorrow, be-cause persons of African heritage in Bermuda do not participate in the economic miracle of Bermuda. That
is a fact. Every social psychologist who has ever studied Bermuda—Dr. Newman; Carol Swain, who was brought here by a former Chairman of the Bank of Butterfield and a leader of the country; all the way back to Mr. Clarke, from the 1970s, who was a good
friend of the late Dr.. . . well, two doctors, actually. He
was a good friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, and he was also a friend of my cousin, the late Dr. Stanley Ratteray, [who] did a social report that outlines similar things. Right along to the Pitt Report, and all of that.
Until this country can have the true convers ation at all levels, at the levels we had gathered in BermudaFirst, the conversations that, when a person in the boardrooms where the black community are not repres ented properly and proportionately in this cou ntry . . . when those things can change in a real way,
when economic. . . when decisions on hiring and
bringing people on board of colour who have the cr edentials, when that can change, then we might have the opportunity to live that façade of a miracle that exists when a hurricane comes. Because you know what we all do, even those who I would say profess not to believe in God . . . when those 120- miles -anBermuda House of Assembly hour winds are there in the quietness of their home, I
know they are doing similar to me. They are praying.
Most of them are praying.
And we make no joke about hurricanes because the people of Abaco . . . you do not hear about
them anymore. You know, thousands of people died
in those hurricanes. And climate change. What is
missing in BermudaFirst, and I feel duty bound to say
is . . . and this happens when you look at a problem
from an economic standpoint. And you cannot fault
businesspeople. You put businesspeople all in a room, they are going to look at dollars and cents and
statistics. That is what they are trained to do. That is
what they do for a living. That is what makes them
successful. What is missing is sustainable develop-ment, the environment.
Because I will never forget, Mr. Speaker,
when I represented Bermuda in 1992, I am reminded
that it was, a long time ago, in Hong Kong. It was very
depressing to drive from that very nice hotel, the
Shangri -La, that we were housed in. We flew first -
class there. We were given three first -class tickets. I
traded t hem in and got four business -class tickets.
And nice, smiling Bermudians in Bermuda shorts in
November going to JFK, they upgraded us on Nort heast Airlines and put us all first class, put us up in the
Shangri -La. But they drove us to the plushest golf
course in the world, Royal Hong Kong Golf Club,
where the HSBC still has their tournament today that Hong Kong has gone back to, to China.
The trip to Fanling was the most depressing
trip I have ever made in all my years playing profes-sional golf, traveling all around the world. To see the congestion of people living on top of each other, with
the antennas hanging out of their windows, with their .
. . and to think. And you know what in 1992, what ev erybody was doing? Walking on the street with cell
phones. They were way ahead. The next technology
was already there. The future had already . . . I looked
at the future. I did not like what I saw. It did not make
me feel good.
I was trained in social science. I was just a
country golfer. But I took social science as a major,
along with business, in Alabama. And I want to say that businesspeople look at social issues when they
have to make business decisions and decide whether or not their logos are going to be green because it
may attract more people to buy from t hem. That is the
truth in Bermuda. When you go back and do the social
audit, you look at the ebbs and flows of Bermuda, and
you will see all of these manifest themselves. And,
you know, people will complain and they will talk about health care. And they wi ll try their best to crit icise the Minister of Health because the Minister would
dare to look at this monster of a problem, because I
know, like me, she has had people come up to her who had no insurance. She has had to have had pe ople make decisions who m ay have a property and
deeds, where their family members may be looking and waiting and rubbing their hands, and saying, Well,
why don't you go and use that so that you can buy
and get some money to buy your medicine and the
like? And people having to make a decision between
$1,000— Am I going to go? —or less .
Because that pension they got back in 1989
or 1990, they are living longer now. It has been 20 or
30 years gone by. And the only thing left is enough to
pay for an upgraded insurance policy because the
Lord has blessed them long enough to live. But, lo and behold, if they went in the hospital, it could wipe out everything that the family who is struggling has.
Those are real decisions that have to be made.
And people who are not living that do not feel
that as much. That is part of the problem. So, in Ber-mudaFirst, going forward, please let us please make
sure that there is a political element there. Because whether you like politics or not, politics happens all
over the world. And if you think that the politics of
Bermuda are outrageous, look at countries in South America. Look at the politics of America. Look at Bri tain, the motherland, and people my age have decided
that they are seeing less of their country culture being
embraced because Europe has grown so. Is that not
something? Let us look at BermudaFirst from . . .
Let us embrace BIOS down at the great constituency down at Ferry Reach, where the bright and
best are brought here to study, to look for future ways of medicine and study our very ocean. Let us embrace
a sustainable development in a way that allows us to
look at [whether] it is possible for us to be sustainable
with fewer people. Why not? We have the best and brightest gathered. Everybody talks about, you know
. . . I will never forget. He has been in the Chamber a
couple of times today. I never forget in the early 2000s, the champion of sustainable development was
a Minister named Mr. Arthur Hodgson. He talked
about sustainable development in a very real way,
[being the] scholar he is. He had a lot of sense,
though. And I think that we certainly need to look at
that in these very things.
Yes, you know, it is easy to gloss over the
macaroni and cheese. I declare my interest; I love macaroni and cheese, okay?

[Laughter]

I make light of that, but
there are a lot of cultural connections to our diets. You
know, the same way persons would celebr ate the fact
that . . . I looked in that desk right there, and it showed us where, you know, you used to write in your desk. In that very desk right there where the Honourable MP,
Minister Foggo, sits, there are four generations cel e2676 15 November 2019 Official Hansard Report

Bermuda House of Assembly brated there. Great -great-grandfather, grandfather
and the like right there in that very desk.
So, it is important. Make no mistake: It is i mportant to everybody, heritage. What we eat goes
back those same four generations. And why we eat it goes back those very same generations. And the fact
that the price of cheese went from a dollar all the way
up to four dollars in the blink of an eye is connected to
that very thing. That is the real Bermuda. Those are
the problems that the Minister of Health has to grapple
with as she looks at the problem.
And, you know, Members are making fun. But
you know what? I am as passionate right now. I just
took a page out of the Honourable Walton Brown's
book. The old kid is just learning how to just slow it up
and hit those little two- irons out i n the fairway, rather
than hitting that big Bertha driver all the way to the
boundary. But it is important. You know? Honourable
Member makes an interpolation about a cheese tax,
you know, an interpolation. But I am here to tell you,
the foods that black people eat in Bermuda go way back. It goes way back before the land grabs. It goes
way back then.
And as we look at these important issues that
BermudaFirst did take a look at . . . and Members
said, Let's get back to that. But, you know, we cannot
look at these issues in just a myopic, or just like the
way in which people want people comfortably to look at things, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have serious racial
problems that people put aside during a hurricane,
because people put them aside every day of their l ife
because they do not have to. White privilege is in
Bermuda because of things such as the Caucasian rule that existed in golf between 1935 and 1961. It
exists because of that. And until people start looking
back at this country to see how Bermuda got to where
it is today and how people are living off of the fruits of
that unjust society and honestly have that convers ation, Bermuda will be the worst for it, as we are.
You know, recently, I represented Bermuda in
Uganda and was met by former workers in Bermuda
who are from Uganda, accountants, mostly. I taught
some of the people who came to this country to work from there. And I have very much appreciation for the
work that they did and the love that they hold for Bermuda. They hosted us. And dare I say th at, in Uganda, a former British Territory, a Christian country, I
was struck when I attended the Catholic church there.
My wife is Catholic. We were invited by a friend of a
friend in Bermuda to attend church with them. We
went to the Catholic church. A full 99.9 per cent of the
people who attended that church were black. And in Bermuda, the Catholic church is 90- plus per cent
white, very similar to the voting patterns that take
place that the Opposition rely on, the entrenchment in
race in this country as it relates to voting, as it relates
to where people socialise. That is the reality of Bermuda that we live in. So, you cannot expect Bermuda to wake up
and live the conclusion page of BermudaFirst if the
reality of Bermuda is something different. And that is
. . . and all that I have said related to BermudaFirst in
every way, because I understand it. And I understood it so much when I went to Uganda and I saw the sim ilarities, not just in the facial features of people, which
were very similar, the same way as when I went to St.
Kitts. People would look at me and say, You’re from . .
. You’re from Sandy Point ( and the like) , because
that's where my granny came from. As is my cousin,
Michael, same families, and many others here. I saw
those same connections i n Uganda. Unbelievable.
But more importantly, because of the British
influence, I saw the respect of faith and religion there. Two of my colleagues were there, the Honourable
Patricia Gordon- Pamplin and the Speaker. And we all
went to church. The Seventh- day Adventist church
family is very prevalent there. The Anglican church
family is very prevalent there. The people are very
respectful people. The children were dressed the way
we used to dress to go to church 40 –50 years ago.
And so, I asked myself, in a country where
72 per cent of the local population is of an ethnic connection to the black community, I could see the benefit of us looking to Uganda and places like that for when
we are in need of actuaries and accountants. So, I
saw the same . . . we wo uld have a similar problem
when it came to the macaroni and cheeses and all
that. Yes, yes. Because that is what we black people
eat on a Sunday afternoon, Honourable Member Michael Dunkley. So, make fun of it. You know, maybe you would prefer if I was really given the run of the
spirit and so you could say, [whispering] Oh, he's so
passionate! Oh, you know, maybe he's angry! I am
just telling you what the truth is, brother, whether or
not you want to believe it. It is true. In this country,
white privilege benefits you, Honourable Member, because you are white. It benefits you.
And until such time as we are prepared to
address that, redress that and make it fair and level
. . . I often speak about my love for the game of golf. It
is the only sport where yo u would penalise yourself,
where other sports would get away with a rules infraction. You would know about that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Why do we not want to adopt the principle of forgetting what really went on in the conclusion? Why do not
we adopt the principle of golf, where we would penalise yourself for knowing that your infraction . . . that
you are doing wrong? A wrong is actually happening in a community. That is what is taking place in Ber-muda. People are benefiting from a wrong construct.
And they d o not want to have the honest conversation
about it. And that is the real problem, as we look at
immigration, which is a thorny subject in every country. Let us not forget that many of the countries around
the world do not handle their politics in quite th e civ ilised way that we do, notwithstanding our differences —notwithstanding our differences.


Bermuda House of Assembly As we look at education and health care, let
us not look at these issues in isolation, that Bermuda
must look [more carefully] at our sustainability. And as
we lo ok at the conclusion, let us conclude that in order
for us to be our brother's keeper we must take on
board that there are many of us, our brothers in Bermuda, who are riding the crest of the wave of white
privilege. And until this country is prepared to l ook at
that, all of these social issues, which impact our ec onomic model, will remain. They will remain.
And as one who, in my heart, looks out for all,
I cannot help but to call a spade a spade and to tell it
like it T -I is, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not going to
make any apologies for the fact that the model that we
have inherited is broken. We can subscribe to that conclusion. The opportunity to live in that after -
hurricane effect is not possible until such time as we redress and address the imbalance that persons of
the black community in Bermuda have to live with.

[Hon. Dennis P. Lister, Jr., Speaker, in the Chair]

And selected success
stories are not what I am here to talk about, as it r elates to this report, Mr. Speaker. ( Good evening.) No.
Because there are too many examples in our history
where persons have figured us out, studied us and figured out how to make it work. When we talk about
institutional racism and the systemic racism that lives
in Bermuda, it exists becaus e people benefit from it.
That is the truth. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Honourable Member.
Does any other Member wish to speak?
No other Member. That brings us to a close.
And I think that brings us to a close of the Orders that were being done today, correct? So, we will now do
our third reading.
[Inaudible interjections and laughter]

SUSPENSION OF STANDING ORDER 21
Hon. Curtis L. Dickinson: Mr. Speaker, I move that
Standing Order 21 be suspended to enable me to
move that the Bi ll entitled National Pension Scheme
(Occupational Pensions) Amendment Act 2019 be
now read a third time by its title only.