Human Resources committee  I'm not entirely sure about Canadians generally. Certainly among our membership they gave us their response. As you might know, we do poll our members every two weeks on our various advocacy issues. On this one, we specifically asked them what was the reason, if they were still working, that they were doing so.

Human Resources committee  Yes, twice a month.

Human Resources committee  Very poorly. First of all, people who themselves, despite the assurances.... Our members tend to be over 50, and most of them would not be specifically affected themselves because of the transition period. Nonetheless, the response rejection of that change was about 80%. When you drill down a bit to ask them why that is so, given that they themselves would not actually suffer the penalty, they said it was “because it's something we paid for in our taxes”.

Human Resources committee  That work has yet to be done properly. The concern at this end is more that there's hardly any clear and present category of industry where older workers are welcomed with open arms. They tend to be found in casual, precarious positions, part-time and so on. It used to be adequate for those who were having a decent retirement and just wanted to get out and about to stay socialized.

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for bringing a focus to the strategies to retain and recruit older workers, and thank you for the opportunity to present on the study. CARP is a national non-profit, non-partisan organization, with about 300,000 members across the country and 56 chapters.