Thank you very much.
We are a national research and law reform institute. We focus exclusively on issues associated with law and aging. We are independent, non-partisan, and non-political, and we're very honoured to present to you today.
I wanted to lead off by saying that while we are not an advocacy-based organization, we have had the privilege of reviewing some of the submissions from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the Foundation for Advancements of Investor Rights, FAIR Canada, and we agree with many of those provisions.
I'm going to focus today on three things. First, I'm going to try to bring the voice of older people to the table when we review both the OAS and look at some of the code provisions with regard to financial services. Second, I'm going to bring to the table the voice of older women in particular, and how older women are disproportionately negatively affected. That information is not well reflected in the provisions available in the budget that the committee has looked at so far. Third and last, I'm going to focus very specifically on section 19 of the OAS with regard to the payment allowance for a pensioner's spouse or common-law partner.
To begin, I think it's important to reflect that financial services are not dealing with the overarching reality of Canada's aging population. We have the largest demographic shift in the history of humankind, and we have the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in Canadian history. With great respect, many of the provisions reflected in the document before us for consideration do not adequately reflect the real needs of Canadians to make sure that financial services are responsive to both the aging population and the transfer of wealth, and that services are accessible, make sense, and deal with the realities of cognitive impairment that we see.
In a 2016 study that we participated in, reviewing financial elder abuse in particular, we know that 2.6% of all Canadians are subject to financial elder abuse involving hundreds of millions of dollars. We know many people are becoming older and many people are becoming more cognitively impaired, and that financial services have not established training to deal with that.
The complaint mechanisms we've seen proposed are enormously confusing for older people and families. They don't know how to go to a variety of resources, how to manage internal services with their financial institutions. They perceive gaps in insurance services. We hear time and again that older people and family members simply are not being well served by financial institutions and that the dispute resolution mechanisms are inadequate in this regard.
I want to bring together the voice of older women. We just finished a three-year consultation with older women of diverse populations, including indigenous populations, and some said the government has to raise their pensions, it has to raise OAS, it's not enough, they cannot eat. If they're earning half as much as a man, then they're only able to contribute half as much to their pension. They save for an RRSP, but it's not meeting their needs when they're old. Aging is a man's world. Women are starving. When we reflect on how negatively women are served by OAS.... We appreciate the changes that are being made to the OAS, and appreciate that it has been raised, but there are significant impacts for older women, particularly because they are the poorest group in all of Canada.
Most people living in Canada contribute to CPP through paid employment. It provides a pension based on a lifetime of pensionable earnings. We age throughout life. When we see the dropouts for caregiving it means that older women in particular live in poverty.
The last piece I want to raise is a very narrow point of section 19 in the OAS. In particular, this section deals with people who may be forced to separate because of things like jail. We hear time and again that people are forced to separate because of care needs, particularly when they move into retirement homes and nursing homes. There is no presumption that this kind of separation would be included in this.
With great respect, there should be clarity that when people are forced to separate for health and care needs, it's not accidentally captured by this provision.
I'm happy to speak further on a number of aspects, but those are my initial comments.