Okay. It would be opportune to give a brief glimpse of the story of our struggle for the amendment of this section of the OAS Act.
The Right Honourable Paul Martin, in a number of meetings with the OABF in Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver, expressed his unequivocal support and commitment--and also publicly announced this on certain occasions--to resolve this genuine issue. After a cabinet meeting in Kelowna, when this point was raised by a prominent Liberal leader of B.C., J. Minhas, the Right Honourable Prime Minister informed him that a high-ranking committee of four ministers had been asked to look into the matter and make a positive decision. Nothing came out of that promise.
The government changed in the beginning of 2006. Our campaign for this genuine cause continued. Throughout the last year, we e-mailed petitions in this connection to all the MPs, irrespective of their party affiliation. Also, a campaign of personal meetings with MPs of the GTA continued. We presented a petition to them by handouts.
The campaign bore significant fruit when Ms. Colleen Beaumier, MP for Brampton West, moved a private amendment, Bill C-362, in this connection on October 25, 2006. Its first reading is due, so we were told, in this session of the House Commons.
We personally lobbied MPs Ruby Dhalla, Gurbax Malhi, Navdeep Bains, Roy Cullen, Omar Alghabra, Jack Layton, Olivia Chow, and others. Agreeing with and supporting our cause, MPs Gurbax Malhi and Ruby Dhalla have given statements on the floor of the House of Commons in support of this issue.
To make our struggle wide-based, we have joined with the Immigrant Seniors Advocacy Network of Toronto, comprised of the Chinese Canadian National Council's Toronto chapter, the Hispanic Development Council, the African Canadian Social Development Council, the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians, and other seniors groups. After deliberations, the network’s steering committee passed an all-party resolution for immigrant seniors’ income security in order to help improve the living conditions of immigrant seniors in Canada irrespective of their country of origin.
It reads:
Whereas the maintenance of strong, healthy, and vibrant families with the full knowledge of each individual that he/she enjoys an equal status in the eyes of the law of the land is a core Canadian value;
Whereas the unification and reunification of older adults and seniors with their families in Canada through immigration forms a core aspect of the promotion and attainment of strong, healthy, vibrant families in Canada;
Whereas newcomer seniors suffer unfairly from the 10-year residency requirement under Canada’s income security programs;
Whereas Canada’s Old Age Security, Guaranteed Income Supplement, and social assistance programs are in fact age, capacity, and need-based benefit programs, not individual contribution-based income security plans;
and so on.
Therefore, we resolved to recommend that the government amend the Old Age Security Act, the regulations and policies, to eliminate the 10-year residency requirement for OAS and GIS; waive the enforcement of sponsorship obligations through government cost recovery schemes as a condition of financial support in situations of genuine immigration sponsorship breakdown; establish a nominal public transit card for all seniors in Canada that costs just $45, as it does in British Columbia, so that all seniors will be able to overcome the isolation they suffer because of the cost of using public transit.
These measures are jointly recommended--
