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Mar 01, 2007
Quickie Link: Top court says gay survivor benefits should not be retroactive to 1985
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By vanrozenheim
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(Ottawa, Canada) - Surviving spouses of same-sex partnerships lost their bid Thursday to force the federal government to pay millions of dollars worth of retroactive CPP survivor benefits. In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada said the spouses are fully entitled to apply for CPP survivor benefits if their partner died since the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were enacted in 1985. It said the federal government’s legislation setting the cut off date at January 1, 1998 violated the equality provisions of the Charter. But it said applicants should only qualify for retroactive benefits of 12 months which, the court said provides them the same treatment as their opposite sex counterparts.
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