Finance Committee on April 22nd, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We will call the meeting to order.

Welcome, all, to meeting number 36 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. We are meeting to study all aspects of COVID-19 spending, programs and related monetary policy.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of January 25. Therefore, members are attending in person in the room, or remotely, using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so you're aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee. We ask that people not take photos of the total screenshot, which some of you can probably see.

I want to welcome the witnesses today.

This is the first panel of two, but before I start, Pat Kelly, I have just a heads-up for you. We've had two blackouts in my office today, and it's always possible that another one will happen, so if the screen goes black, just take over—the chair is yours.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

All right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We will start with the witnesses. I'd ask the witnesses if each of you could try to hold your remarks to about five minutes or thereabouts.

We'll start with Mr. Vallée Dore with the Réseau Solidarité Itinérance du Québec.

[Boromir Vallée Dore, Coordinator, Réseau SOLIDARITÉ Itinérance du Québec]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Réseau SOLIDARITÉ Itinérance du Québec, or RSIQ, team would like to express our gratitude to the members of the Standing Committee on Finance for this invitation. We welcome the consultative work you are doing to analyze the special measures that have been taken during this pandemic.

The RSIQ now includes 15 regional homelessness networks throughout Quebec. We are talking about 330 community homelessness organizations that offer services such as emergency housing, supervised consumption sites, street work resources, resources for women, day centres and organizations for troubled youth.

Founded in 1998, the RSIQ is a privileged interlocutor in Quebec. It is also the initiator of the National Policy to Fight Homelessness, which was adopted at the Quebec National Assembly in 2014. This policy is broken down into five priority areas of intervention. The first is housing, the second is health and social services, the third is income, the fourth is education as well as social and socio-professional integration, and the fifth is social cohabitation and issues related to court referral.

Many indicators are in the red right now and we anticipate that there will be an increase in homelessness-related needs in the coming years. It is imperative that our five axes be addressed. We also need to give more flexibility and capacity to community groups.

With respect to the emergency funding programs that were deployed during the COVID-19 crisis, we applaud the fact that the federal government quickly put in place substantial funding for Reaching Home: Canada's Homelessness Strategy - COVID-19, which we also refer to as VCS COVID 3. This funding allowed our members to develop services to urgently address the needs of people experiencing homelessness. However, we have faced the following limitations. While the amounts are substantial, the funding provided through the Homelessness Strategy - COVID-19 does not provide community groups with the flexibility to respond to the challenges they face, such as labour shortages, worker burnout, increased distress among those being served, and so on. They must therefore redouble their efforts to continue to respond well to the needs of people experiencing homelessness.

Unfortunately, all of these constraints have made it very difficult to adequately address the needs of populations that are too often overlooked, such as women, LGBTQ2S people, youth, indigenous persons, and people who use drugs. We had to commit huge amounts of money very quickly. I give you as an example what we call VCS COVID 3, which was up to $40 million for Quebec. We were asked to spend in three months, without offering us any flexibility, the amount of money we usually have for a year.

The guidance, in the case of these amounts, confirmed that the money could be committed from April 1 to June 30. Yet the groups did not receive the funds until January. History is repeating itself. We still don't know what will happen after July 1 in terms of the continuity of VCS COVID 3. As a result, groups have begun announcing service disruptions. Workers are now seeking employment. We need to at all costs announce these dates as soon as possible.

We report in our evaluation that the VCS COVID 3 dollars have not allowed agencies to act with sufficient flexibility to meet the challenges brought on by increased need while overcoming the barriers created by the health environment.

Considering that the negative effects of the pandemic will have alarming social repercussions for several years to come, it is necessary to move beyond the emergency and to look further ahead by working in a preventive mode and developing structuring measures for the future. Here are our four recommendations: 1) that the dates for the use of the $289 million that constitute the VCS COVID 3 envelope be confirmed as soon as possible and that these funds be available as early as July 1; 2) that, in order to allow for more flexibility, the $567 million that have been announced for the 2022-24 budget be allocated to the regular envelopes and not to the emergency envelopes; 3) that, as agreed to in the Canada-Quebec Reaching Home COVID 3 agreement, the funds be allocated respecting the comprehensive approach set out in the National Policy to Fight Homelessness, and the jurisdiction of the Quebec government; 4) that what was mentioned to us when the agreement was signed be respected and that accountability in the case of groups be lightened.

With respect to the rapid housing initiative, RHI, while our members reacted favourably to the announcement concerning the creation of this program, the application process is unfortunately problematic. Many groups were not able to apply for this project because the timelines were so short and the groups were dealing with the effects of the pandemic, which they had to manage.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much.

We'll turn to the Canadian Association of Retired Persons.

Mr. VanGorder, welcome.

[Bill VanGorder, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Policy Officer, Canadian Association of Retired Persons]

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the opportunity to appear today. I am Bill VanGorder. I am the chief operating officer of CARP, also known as the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. We are Canada’s largest advocacy organization for older adults.

We're a national, non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for financial security and improved health care for Canadians. We have 320,000 members across the country and 27 chapters, all playing an active role in the creation of policy and legislation that affects older Canadians.

With more than 80% of the COVID-19 deaths linked to institutional long-term care, and the 90% of older Canadians who live in their own homes all severely impacted by COVID, Canadians were shocked by the complete inability of the system to protect its older citizens during the pandemic.

We found that the historic issues that have undermined elder care for some time exploded during this period. Overcrowded wards, lack of staff training, chronic understaffing and lack of support for family caregivers all must be addressed. Canada lags behind other countries in funding long-term care and community and home care. In long-term care, for instance, we only spend 1.3% of the GDP, where countries like the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden spend over twice as much on their elder citizens.

We need federal government financial support that provides appropriate, clear and measurable standards to improve the quality of care for all of these vulnerable Canadians, along with the appropriate tools to take action should these outcomes not be achieved.

CARP believes that the federal Auditor General should establish a working group to establish consistent standards for reviewing services and expenditures on home care and long-term care and make the report on it an annual Auditor General's event. We'd also like to see a panel of older Canadians created to advise the government on policies and programs. Older Canadians want decisions made with them, not for them, and they strongly believe that their level of health care should not be determined by their postal code.

CARP notes that the federal government’s budget presented this week includes some promises to assist older Canadians. The first is the beginning of a process to set, monitor and enforce appropriate long-term care standards. However, the $3 billion over five years had only one goal in the first year, and that was to get the Canadian Standards Association and two other groups to create a policy document that could be examined as late as early 2022. Surely we would agree with the CARP members who are saying that the need now is urgent and older adults across the country want action now.

As a sidebar, by the way, we note that there has been talk about changing the Canada Health Act. That will take much too long. There's much too much involved in that. CARP believes that long-term care should be a separate agreement with the provinces. Our members will work with the federal government to urge our provincial governments to co-operate on that process.

The budget also proposed $90 million over three years to produce the living well at home fund. That's wonderful to have that happen. Certainly those kinds of helps, like home repair and grass cutting and other assistance, are the sorts of things they need. However, the support must be accompanied by national standards to meet those critical needs, but also make sure there's enough funding for front-line home care, community care, respite care, expanding telehealth care solutions, eliminating sales taxes on family-funded services and an income tax rebate for family caregivers.

In the past, programs similar to the living well at home program, such as the new horizons grants, were provided as seed funding and then expected the local volunteer groups to fundraise or obtain other local grants to continue those programs beyond a year or so. This will not work with the living well at home program.

CARP urges you to assure that they will be funded for multiple years to assure that these services continue to be available to those older Canadians who require them.

We also must point out our severe disappointment and our members' disappointment that nothing has been offered in terms of help for family caregivers. Child care, yes, but what about those families who have to give similar care to older parents or family members, many of whom are in a sandwich generation where they have to give care to both?

Finally and honestly, CARP is sorry to report to you that older Canadians have a perception that the federal government has done very little to directly assist them during COVID. We're hearing from our members that they've seen money going to workers, businesses and institutions, but none for seniors.

In all fairness, of course, it can be pointed out that there have been programs that have been aimed at helping seniors, but in their view, all they have received was $300 last June, another $500 promised this August, and $200 more maybe last June if they were really poor. To dispel this perception, quicker, more focused actions by the federal government are necessary to support older Canadians during these difficult times.

Thank you for the opportunity to bring CARP's concerns to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, Bill.

We'll turn to Ms. Kamateros with the Shield of Athena Family Services.

[Melpa Kamateros, Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services]

Good afternoon. Hello to all the members of the committee and guests. It is an honour for us to present to the committee today on the specific issues we deal with in violence against women.

I'd also like to say hi to Lise, with whom we've been working on several occasions.

I'm the executive director of the Shield of Athena Family Services. We have provided for the past 30 years a network of multilingual services for victims of conjugal violence. We have three points of service presently. We will be building a fourth transition home, a social housing unit for women, for after their stay at an emergency shelter. We also have a fully developed community outreach department. Annually, we raise awareness to thousands of people on the issues of conjugal violence. This we do in many, many languages.

The global effects of the pandemic from last March—officially, I think it was March 11 when it was announced—until the present have impacted everyone and have disrupted the rhythm of life as we know it. I would like to say thank you to the Government of Canada for all they have done for victims of violence in terms of the COVID payments. We thank them and also our respective provinces very much.

What we've seen during this pandemic is that no one is immune. The most affected, however, are women, and by consequence their children. We think of women with their children as part of a package. The lockdowns and quarantines have affected women's capacity to go to work. They have affected their ability to provide. They have affected their ability to protect themselves and their children and, particularly in the field we work in, to keep themselves safe and out of danger.

In the case of violence against women, we're already dealing with a pandemic. The United Nations had labelled violence against women as a global pandemic way before the health pandemic of COVID began. It had already reached, before COVID, pandemic proportions. What are we speaking of? We're speaking of the lack of access to services, the lack of spaces in shelters, ineffective laws, not enough prevention programs, not enough awareness of the issue of conjugal violence and the minimization of the existence of conjugal violence. Those all existed prior to the global COVID pandemic. What happened when the pandemic hit was that for women victims, already limited in their scope of action, their situation became much more reinforced and much more dangerous due to their isolation with an abusive partner. This same isolation also made it more difficult for them to access information, to call organizations and to plan for an escape.

As well, there was an initial shock with the pandemic that resulted in people not calling. This elicited the various organizations that worked with victims to do outreach programs. I know that we were very heavily involved in outreach programs in many languages. We would tell people, particularly victims, “Look, this is COVID, but you can access the services.” Information is knowledge, and knowledge is power.

There was also the fact that during COVID there were no procedures in place. There was an initial shock with the fact that we were within this pandemic. No procedures were in place. It was very difficult for women to access any services, to go to the police or to go to the hospital, particularly when they were very often living with their enemy.

For years shelters in Quebec have been clamouring that there hasn't been enough space to put women and children in. The emergency shelters have been working at rates of over 100%. In 2018 our shelter was working at a rate of 105%. This lack of space during that time became much more evident with the pandemic.

What does shelter living involve? Shelter living involves community living. It's a communal life, but how do you have community living within the context of a pandemic? It's impossible. Social distancing is impossible. Isolating women is impossible. Many of the shelters are small shelters. They do not have the space for that and they do not have the means. Where you could double up women and children before, you could not do that within the context of a global pandemic. Whatever was underlying in terms of problems with space and resources became even worse with this global pandemic.

Of course, for women of race, for women coming from immigrant communities, for women who presented with severe linguistic and other barriers, the situation of just attaining basic information, never mind accessing resources, became really horrendous because their isolation was even more pronounced.

Despite this situation, shelters and other organizations devised ways to help women get into limited resources. We recommend that more funds go towards expanding spaces for already existing shelters. There's a huge need there. There was a huge need there from before.

By far, however, access to second-step housing was even more difficult. I don't know if you've heard, but in Quebec, from the beginning of the pandemic, from May, we've had 15 murders. Another woman was killed over the past weekend. The purpose of second-step resources is to allow a very secure environment for women leaving emergency shelters. We all know that the violent episodes during the first year are huge at the point of the woman deciding to leave an abusive relationship. They're huge for her and huge for her children.

My question is, why were these resources so slow in coming? If we take our example at the Shield of Athena, it took us 10 years from day one until now to be building a second-step shelter. Procedures are long and arduous. Maybe they can be made lighter. Maybe they can respond more quickly to certain needs that are coming forth regarding violence against women.

In terms of these procedures, I realize that it does not solely have to do with the federal government. There are the provincial actors as well. Working with the Société d'habitation du Québec was horrendous. It took such a long time. There were bureaucratic messes, and so on. Therefore, we recommend just an overview towards seeing what it is that we can do in order to make the situation much better for the women and their children.

The other aspect of going into a second-step resource is, of course, to help the woman attain a situation of autonomy. Autonomy is really hard for women who are victims of conjugal violence. In addition to the financial dependency that we see in the conjugal violence cases, there's also the fear of where do they go to after. A lot of them are single mothers. A lot of them are scared. A lot of them don't speak the language. There are huge issues with attaining autonomy.

Taking that into consideration, we respectfully request that the committee take into consideration that one of the most important issues for victims is their right to some sort of financial indemnization, a recognition in the form of financial assistance for a limited time until they are back on their feet.

We are speaking in Quebec about some emergency funds that can be given to women so that they can expedite matters for themselves to leave abusive situations more quickly, but that's not the issue. That's part of the issue, and this comes from the lack of a global perspective on what we need for conjugal violence. One of the most important issues is that we have to recognize the severity of what conjugal violence is, that it's a social issue, and we have to recognize the status of what being a victim of this type of violence is.

We recommend and respectfully request that the committee take into consideration that a specific allocation, some sort of stipend, be given to victims of conjugal violence, be they single women or single mothers with their children, because all victims of conjugal violence need financial support.

I thank the committee very much for hearing us on this topic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, Melpa.

We'll turn to Watershed Partners, with Mr. Ursell, who is a practice lead.

Mr. Ursell.

[Charlie Ursell, Practice Lead, Watershed Partners]

Hello. My name is Charlie Ursell. Thank you to the honourable members of the committee for inviting Watershed Partners to appear today.

As you can probably tell from my accent, I'm not originally from here. I'm an immigrant and I'm genuinely excited to take part in the parliamentary process in my adopted home.

I'm a professional facilitator and a process designer at Watershed Partners. What that means is that I help clients have collaborative, generative conversations with people who have a variety of perspectives so they can create solutions to the biggest problems that they face.

Thank you to the committee for sending this invitation and also for the clarification that you're interested in learning more about a project that we delivered related to wealth and the problem of housing inequity across generations. It truly is an honour to share our work with you today.

As a brief overview, Watershed Partners is a collaborative design firm that designs and facilitates engagement across a wide range of people with a wide range of perspectives. The purpose of our work is to enable participants in our sessions to freely create their own solutions to the problems that they face. I believe that people love what they design and people own what they create.

Watershed creates the conditions for good conversations. Then we step back and ensure that the participants in the sessions own the outcomes of their own work. Our participants bring the content and we bring the process. The majority of our work is with private sector clients who are seeking to collaboratively work with their customers, with their investors and also with local partners. Many of these clients are in Canada's resource sector. We've also worked in the agriculture sector, with indigenous peoples, with investor groups, with hospitals and health care providers, not-for-profit groups and others.

When you think of what we do, we're what happens when event planners and professional facilitators meet.

We have little or no content knowledge about the subject matter that our participants are engaging in. This way of working ensures we don't suffer from cognitive bias known as the curse of knowledge or the curse of expertise. We view our neutrality on the topics at hand as a way of maintaining the trust and the confidence of our stakeholders. It ensures that we as facilitators and as process designers have no preconceived notions or interests. This allows us to be trusted third parties and honest brokers when we are invited into the complex problems that our clients and their partners face.

Twice in our organization's six-year history we've worked on projects related to housing. Both of these times were with Generation Squeeze. On both occasions, our role was as neutral third party facilitators and process designers. We held no subject matter expertise in the topics of engagement.

The second project, which was anchored and centred on housing inequity, intended to generate a series of policy solutions to intergenerational barriers to home ownership. Access to affordable housing is an acute problem in Canada, as many of the honourable members here today know from their own experience in their ridings.

We were honoured to work with Generation Squeeze on this project. We were approached by Gen Squeeze in June 2019 to see if we would be willing and able to provide facilitation services for a project that would enable participants to have open-ended conversations in order to generate potential solutions to high house prices.

Our role was to create a good process to enable those generative conversations amongst participants with lived experiences. As the neutral third party facilitator, our role also included capturing those solutions and insights that the participants have generated and helping them critically challenge and prioritize their own solutions.

As an outcome, we anticipated that our work would help participants create their own road map to scalable and implementable solutions. We facilitated two sessions as part of this project.

At the conclusion of the second session, Watershed Partnership and Gen Squeeze agreed that Watershed would no longer be providing services or be involved in this project. We did so because we agreed that Watershed wasn't the right partner for this project based on our business model where we are content absent. As a relationship, our work was formally dissolved during the week of November 9, 2020.

If the committee has any questions respecting how we support collaborative generative conversations amongst people with lived experience as part of this project, I will be more than happy to provide our insights.

As we're not subject matter expertise, I will do my very best to answer your questions, but if we're unable, I recommend that content questions are probably better suited to Gen Squeeze and CMHC to answer.

Once again, I would like to thank you for your kind invitation. I'm really excited to be here today. I would love to share more about the work we do and answer any questions you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ursell.

Before I go to our last witness, Women's Shelters Canada, the lineup for the first panel on questions will be Mr. Fast, Ms. Koutrakis, Mr. Ste-Marie and Mr. Julian.

We'll turn to Ms. Martin, executive director, Women's Shelters Canada.

Go ahead, Lise.

[Lise Martin, Executive Director, Women's Shelters Canada]

Thank you very much for this invitation.

My name is Lise Martin, and I am the executive director of Women's Shelters Canada.

I come to you today from the unceded territory of the Algonquin nation.

We are a national organization representing the 550-plus violence against women's shelters and transition houses across the country.

The pandemic has had devastating impacts on women experiencing abuse. In the context of stay-at-home orders, home is far from safe for a number of women and their children. With the introduction of the stay-at-home orders last spring, shelters, along with our provincial shelter associations, were quick to point out that, if home was not safe, you did not need to stay and that help was available. Throughout all phases of the ongoing pandemic, Canada's 550-plus shelters have remained open.

I will focus my intervention on the federal program to provide emergency COVID funding to gender-based violence organizations, more specifically, the funds provided to shelters and transition houses.

In total, $100 million was provided. The first $50 million was announced in late March 2020 while the second $50 million was announced in late October.

In late March 2020, the department, Women and Gender Equality, reached out to us to discuss the possibility of having our organization distribute the funds earmarked to shelters. Although the distribution of funds is not part of our mission, we knew that we had the most accurate and up-to-date information on shelters. We knew that shelters needed funds ASAP. Finally, we knew that our small but mighty team could take this on.

We distributed $20.5 million to shelters in the spring of 2020 and a further $15.7 million in December. These funds were provided to 385 shelters. On average, each shelter received $90,000 distributed over three transfers. The shelters very much appreciated these funds at this time of unprecedented crisis. The impacts on shelters were numerous. What Melpa has described has occurred in shelters across the country.

The federal emergency COVID funds were able to respond to a very real and immediate need. You will recall that the WHO declared the pandemic on March 11, 2020. Between April 13 and 24, we were able to provide initial funds into the bank accounts of most of Canada's shelters.

Women's Shelters Canada provided funds to all shelters with the exception of those funded by Indigenous Services Canada and those within the province of Quebec, where the distribution was made by the provincial government. We continue to be concerned about shelters in Quebec that had to wait much longer to receive these crucial emergency funds. In the first wave, Quebec shelters did not receive funds before mid-June. Whereas our final third round of disbursement was made in late December prior to the Christmas holidays, shelters in Quebec are only now beginning to receive their third installment.

The funding program was designed with a great deal of flexibility allowing it to respond to the very different needs across the country. In terms of the funds that were announced in late October, we were able to negotiate the deadline for funds to be spent. It is September 30, 2021, rather than the usual March 31.

Last fall we argued convincingly that the pandemic would not end on March 31, which clearly it has not. There were, however, a number of cases where bureaucratic rules superseded logic; namely, the fund did not allow for capital investment. For example, we received a request from a shelter in a remote area of Yukon that asked if funds could be put towards the purchase of a vehicle to transport women. There are huge transportation barriers in the north and in our rural and remote communities. The response was that such an expense could not be covered but that they could make use of taxis, and this would be covered. Well, there are no taxis in this community, and shelters often need to get women in the middle of the night and often at great distances.

A number of shelters reached out asking about building an additional bathroom, converting an office into a bathroom, for example. Unfortunately, all of these requests were turned down because of Treasury Board guidelines that did not adapt to these exceptional circumstances.

Let me now turn to what comes next. The pandemic has highlighted that gender-based violence increases in times of crisis and how fragile our systems and services to respond were and are. This needs to change.

Gender-based violence levels won't go back down after the pandemic. More than ever, we need strong and well-funded services and prevention initiatives to deal with the now and to strengthen our response capabilities for future crises.

As organizations supporting shelters, we, as well as the shelters themselves, need stable and ongoing funding. In our 2019 “More than a Bed” report, 74% of violence against women shelters indicated that insufficient funding was a major challenge, and 64% did not receive a regular annual cost of living increase.

Within this context, it is extremely challenging to remunerate shelter workers' wages that reflect their levels of expertise. A recent study from our member in Alberta showed that the women's shelters' workforce earned less and worked longer hours than the average worker in an equivalent role in the province's non-profit and public sectors. As the pandemic has shown, a sector is only as strong as its people.

Earlier this week, we welcomed the federal budget, which included the first investments into Canada's national action plan on gender-based violence, a plan for which we have been advocating since 2013. It is definitely a major step forward. We have, however, clearly indicated that a fully national action plan will require billions, not millions. Gender-based violence is a systemic issue that requires systemic solutions.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, Lise. Bureaucratic rules superseded logic. Do you think? I can't imagine that. It happens every day. It's one of my biggest complaints. Anyway, thank you for that.

We'll turn to questions. We'll go to six-minute rounds for the first group.

Mr. Fast, you're up.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you. My questions are for Mr. Ursell.

I want to say thanks for coming to committee, notwithstanding the fact that the contract with CMHC, or your part of it, has been terminated. Just to confirm, that relationship was terminated on November 9, 2020.

[Charlie Ursell]

The relationship between us was with Generation Squeeze. It was during the week of November 9.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you for that clarification.

Why did you determine that this was not the right fit?

[Charlie Ursell]

There often reaches a point in a process where content is required. The point we reached in that process was where content expertise was required, and we did not have that. It's very important to me that we deliver value for money to all of our clients and that we operate with integrity. I believe that what we offered in terms of content-free process facilitation was not what was needed, and Generation Squeeze agreed with us.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Content expertise was the only reason for terminating your relationship.

[Charlie Ursell]

Yes.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Okay. You weren't concerned about any other matters relating to the project that caused you concerns and moved you to leave the relationship.

[Charlie Ursell]

We didn't have the content policy knowledge that was needed in order to advance the work. We were content agnostic, so we weren't the right fit.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thanks for that clarification.

Given that clarification, I would like to cede my time to Mr. Kelly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay.

Mr. Kelly, you're on.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Fast.

I'll go to CARP.

Your presentation was very thoughtful. There was a lot of information. Do you have any comments on the the effects of inflation on your members?

We had a report yesterday that inflation has poked through or is getting outside of the normal limit that the Bank of Canada endeavours to maintain, and some reports about how we define inflation and the particular basket of goods that's used. Your members, many on fixed incomes, are very vulnerable to inflation. Can you comment on its effects on your members?

[Bill VanGorder]

You're quite right. People on fixed incomes, seniors, no matter what their income is fixed at—and this is one of the areas that we're often very concerned about.... We often have governments tell us that they'll look after the low-income people. However, the low-income people, unfortunately, in this country are basically people under $20,000 a year. Who can live on $20,000 anyway? The more middle-income people who are still very low income.... If you're a senior or a family living on even $30,000 or $40,000 a year, a fixed income over a number of years, then the kind of inflation that we're seeing now is on basic commodities, basic things that they have to have every day. They are not choices. There's a real concern.

Financial concerns are always right at the top with older Canadians. We do surveys. When we talk in CARP about how 80% of our people believe such and such, we actually survey our people at least once a month on many topics. We're speaking, and we get literally thousands and thousands of responses, so it's a good accurate indication of how they feel. When we ask what the key concerns are that they have, certainly these days it's health that is number one for everybody. However, financial security is always in the top two. Health and financial security move back and forth.

Anything that makes them fear whether or not they will outlive their money is a huge concern the older seniors get.