Mr. Chair, members of the House, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and allow me to thank you for listening to us so attentively. My name is Diane Contant Blanchard and I am here before you today in my capacity as Secretary of the Regroupement des retraités des Aciers Atlas.
Our group was founded on June 14, 2005, and our mandate is to call for the fairness to which all Canadians aspire, especially those who, during their working life, made all the sacrifices required to live the last stages of their lives in dignity. I began working for Aciers Atlas in 1966 and I retired in 1997, proud to have honoured my commitments and to have faithfully contributed to the success of the company for 31 years.
Having contributed to the pension fund throughout those years and in accordance with the provisions of the collective agreement, I was to benefit from a pension the amount of which was guaranteed, signed and counter-signed upon my departure, for the rest of my life. This contract included annual indexing and group insurance coverage.
However, on October 1, 2004 things changed. Over seven years after my departure, I learned, as did my 275 retired colleagues, that our pension would be reduced by between 30% and 58%. We could never have imagined a worse tragedy. There was widespread surprise and shock. I had never considered such a scenario. I had never been invited to speak out democratically about a decision likely to influence my future and my quality of living.
How can a pension be cut when it is guaranteed? How can our pension be cut when section 6 of the Supplemental Pension Plans Act specifies that a pension fund is a contract, a financial patrimony, and thus that priority must be given to the interests of the participants? How can our pensions be cut when Groupe-conseil Aon, though its actuarial services and its investment policy, must ensure that a mature pension scheme is funded correctly? How can our pensions be cut when the pension plan's solvency ratio was 120% in 1999?
And yet, since July 1, 2005, our pension income has been cut by up to $900 per month, which, when your pension is already modest, causes great harm and has appalling consequences. For the past 58 months, the dream of Freedom 55, with its sandy beaches, golf courses and tropical climates that so many workers aspire to, has instead become for the pensioners of Atlas a difficult situation where we have trouble respecting our financial obligations. Once again, we are obliged to struggle and make sacrifices: every time we open an envelope, we see that costs have risen. With these cuts and no indexation for close to five years, our impoverishment has reached a critical level.
How can couples who only have a single pension income from Atlas live? By limiting their spending to basic needs, such as food, housing, medication and gas. There is nothing left over for anything else. How are couples supposed to get by when one or both of them are in nursing or retirement homes? They have no choice but to settle for shabby homes with small rooms, mediocre services and mediocre food.
Last year, the Harper government created a tax credit to encourage home renovation. Were we able to benefit from it? Absolutely not. You had to spend $10,000 before being able to received a single penny. That is approximately the amount we have to live on each year. You will understand that any excess spending causes problems. You will understand even more clearly that such a situation has many awful consequences, such as having to move into a smaller home, having to sell our property before we are ready, buying less food—because bread and butter costs the same for everybody—and never being able to indulge in the small pleasures of life, such as clothing, entertainment, trips or holidays. That is exactly what makes life worth living: the 30% to 58% of our pension that has been cut that allowed us to indulge in these pleasures.
There are divorces and family conflicts.
Psychologically, the lower quality of life and reduced expectations undermine health and create premature health problems, often driving people to death. Twenty-three of us have already died.
Economically, we are talking about $2 million per year that are not being put into the economy. As people grow poor, the state is deprived of taxes but must at the same time pay more for health and housing requirements of their seniors.
Let us talk about the RRSPs, a program that was set up by the federal government to encourage people to save for their retirement. The equivalency factor took retirement pension funds into account in order to determine eligible amounts. Haven't we been fleeced, yet again?
According to the newspapers, Canadian retirees are amongst the happiest in the world, with smiling, serene faces, freedom, recreation and rest. They even show that the older we get, the more fun we have. Why is that not the case for the retirees of Aciers Atlas? Their dreams have been stolen. And yet they have worked hard for 30 to 40 years. We contributed to our retirement fund for all of these years. We placed our trust in all of these good institutions, in all of these laws designed to protect ex-workers and defend their rights.
We reproduced, paid taxes and, in so doing, we participated in the economic well-being of the country and, despite our advanced age, we are still contributing to this prosperity through our volunteer work and the support we give to our relatives. Retirees see that the situation is different for retirees from the public and parapublic sectors, who have sustainable pensions. Is working in the private sector a bad thing? In having everything taken away, we are becoming increasingly destitute.
Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the House of Commons, thank you for allowing us to make you aware of our difficult living conditions. You have the power, allow us to finish our days in dignity.