Mr. Chair, members of Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon—or almost good evening, now.
My name's Rick Baker and I'm the president of the Ottawa chapter of CARP, which stands for the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. It's certainly my privilege to speak on behalf of CARP national and our chief policy officer, Ms. Laura Tamblyn Watts. CARP is a non-partisan, membership-based advocacy organization of more than 320,000 older Canadians in Canada. We have 30 local chapters that engage in their communities as well, and our mission is to advance the rights and well-being of Canadians as we age.
We thank the committee for this opportunity to present to you, and wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and offer our respects to their elders past and present.
It is an important year with the recent budget and the impending federal election. We have a platform that represents comments on the recent budget, but also going forward a platform for all parties to consider. Our goal is to make sure that the federal government commits to specific, measurable improvements in five key areas which matter most to seniors. Most of you may know in this room that seniors now constitute way over 20% of the Canadian population, and we statistically know that over 98% of seniors get out and vote, so they do make a difference.
Our program is called The Faces of Canada's Seniors, which I have a copy of here. If you'd like to get a copy later on, I have some extras for you.
“F” stands for financial security, and a lot of discussions certainly around this table right now are on that aspect. We're extremely supportive of the GIS and we see this as a key win for low-income seniors, particularly older women, who are especially subject to poverty. We are supportive of the changes to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, which provide greater transparency for government over companies that are in dangerous decline into insolvency, including provisions which will inhibit CEOs and other executives from divesting their assets. We believe that these preliminary steps, while important, are not enough to ensure pension security for pensioners. To that end, we adopt the submissions by our colleagues from the Canadian pensioners federation, as submitted by Mike Powell.
The deferred annuities announced in the budget are a positive, and we are supportive of them, but we do not think that allowing a person at 71 years of age to take some 25% of their RRIFs and put that into deferred annuities until 85 is the right answer. It is beneficial to some people, but not to all. What CARP really wants—and what we were very disappointed not to see in the budget—is the elimination of the ageist requirement to withdraw RRIFs at the age of 71. We were also very disappointed to see that the government did not close the loophole and ensure that the ombudsman for banking services and Investments—the public, non-partisan and independent ombudsman—is reinstated as the only ombudsman for Canadian consumers.
“A” stands for abuse prevention. We welcome the increase in the new horizons for seniors program by $100 million over five years. This is an important and needed funding increase for a program that is essentially the backbone of senior service delivery in Canada. We encourage the government to use these funds to be allocated to raising awareness of elder abuse and abuse prevention mechanisms. The new horizons for seniors program has specific calls each year, and we hope that elder abuse will be included in the upcoming 2020 call.
“C” stands for caregiving and housing supports. While we are strongly supportive of the funding for the national dementia strategy, and was pleased to see that caregivers are mentioned in it, we were deeply disappointed that this budget did little for caregivers. Additionally, we would encourage this government—and we support the work of the United Way also being presented here—to invest in a much more modern health and housing continuum, embedding supported housing into the national housing strategy.
“E” stands for exceptional health care. We applaud the government for its steps towards pharmacare in the hope of seeing NACI-recommended adult vaccinations being included in the formula, as opposed to just prescriptions. We are hopeful that funding of a national seniors strategy will be included as well, but cannot locate where any specific funding has been allocated for it.
And “S” stands for social inclusion. We welcome the funding for digital improvements, especially in rural areas, which are critically important to social connections. We also urge this government to fund projects that support intergenerationalism, workplace inclusion and entrepreneurship. Too often, entrepreneur programs are only targeted at younger people, but the majority of investment in Canada in new start-ups come from the 50-plus cohort.
We hope that you join us on October 1 for National Seniors Day in Canada.
Thank you very much.