Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Members of the committee, my name is Gisèle Tassé-Goodman and I am the president of the Réseau FADOQ. With me today is Danis Prud'homme, our chief executive. I would like to thank the members of the committee for inviting us.
The Réseau FADOQ is an association for people 50-plus and has over 550,000 members. All of our political outreach is aimed at improving seniors' quality of life. As we have all seen, seniors were the first victims of COVID-19. A number of programs and expenditures were undertaken to support seniors during the pandemic.
The federal government is fond of pointing out that it provided nearly $1,500 in additional support to low-income senior couples. First, a payment was made in April through the GST credit, but was provided to all Canadians. Second, payments came in the form of one-time top-ups to old age security, or OAS, and the guaranteed income supplement, or GIS. As far as implementing those measures is concerned, the payments were slow in coming.
In fact, Canada's seniors had to wait until July 2020 before receiving financial support through the OAS pension and GIS. If the government had kept its 2019 promise and increased OAS payments by 10% in March 2020, senior couples would have received more than $1,500, just through the OAS.
Nonetheless, the Réseau FADOQ applauds the Prime Minister for keeping his 2019 budget commitment. Our association did, however, recommend that the 10% OAS pension increase apply to everyone eligible for the pension, so as not to create two classes of seniors. The federal government's ad-hoc payments to the provinces and territories in support of health care were also welcome, but the government would have done well to specifically address the enhanced indexing of the Canada health transfer in the recent budget.
While funding was earmarked for long-term care and palliative care, it will no doubt be tied to conditions. We are eager to see how and when the funding will be allocated in Quebec.
Our organization was pleased to see that support was provided to community organizations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Réseau FADOQ appreciates the new horizons for seniors program, which provides direct support to various organizations, and welcomes the additional investment to expand the program.
Similarly, the Réseau FADOQ was happy with the $90 million earmarked in the recent budget to directly support community groups that provide home services. Another way the government has helped seniors during the pandemic is to temporarily extend GIS and allowance payments for eligible seniors whose income information had not yet been received at the time of the budget.
The Réseau FADOQ supports a grace period for GIS recipients who do not file their income tax returns on time, and that grace period should always be in effect. In our 2019 election pamphlet, our organization recommended a period of up to three months. In the same pamphlet, we recommended extending a deceased person's OAS payments to their surviving spouse for three months. Currently, the payment can be received only for the month in which the death occurs, and any payments received after that must be repaid. Such a measure would give grieving seniors time to reorganize their finances.
Lastly, the Réseau FADOQ applauds the pandemic support measure to reduce the required minimum withdrawal from registered retirement income funds, RRIFs. Our organization appreciates the measure but called for a further reduction, if not suspension, of the mandatory withdrawal requirement for 2020.
Many seniors rely on RRIFs to support their retirement goals, which the pandemic has upended. Even though their plans have been put on hold, some seniors were forced to withdraw their hard-earned savings, which they had spent their entire careers building.
Thank you to the committee members for this opportunity.
Mr. Prud'homme would be happy to answer your questions.
Thank you.