Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
I want to begin by thanking Mr. Fergus for inviting me this evening. I really appreciate it.
I support what the gentleman said earlier. We all have parents or we all had parents who worked hard to shape and found this wonderful country of Canada. We have all paid taxes and we all pay our taxes to be able to have such a prosperous and organized country.
I am here this evening to ask you to consider the information I will present to you.
Some people work from the age of 16 until the age of 65. They pay taxes for our good country and for our society. I agree with that, but many people do not reach the age of 70. They die and do not have access to their pension.
Mr. Chair, I did not have much time to prepare, but I will still provide this information.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2016, there were 5,935,000 people aged 65, but 482,000 were aged 85. So 5,453,000 had died. If we take half the people who have paid taxes and could not get that....
I ask you to take this suggestion into consideration. People who live past the age of 80 should not pay any taxes on their old age security pension. Let's just take into account the interests of those who have not had an opportunity to benefit from their pension because they died at the age of 70, and let's prevent those people over the age of 80 from having to pay taxes.
I am not asking for this to apply to people who do not need it, but to those with a low income or those who are living below the poverty line.
I hope that my words will be taken into account.