Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I don't think it's a secret to anybody on the committee the extent to which a number of seniors across the country have been suffering as a result of having their guaranteed income supplement benefits clawed back. These are seniors who worked prior to the pandemic. They were eligible for CERB according to the rules. They were encouraged to apply. They weren't told that it would be clawed back later through the GIS.
This very committee heard the story of a woman, for instance, who is living in her car in the Northwest Territories at the outset of winter because she can't make rent. We have a colleague, Alistair MacGregor, who had a man contact him recently because he had just been diagnosed with cancer. He has an eviction pending on December 23 and he can't afford his medications.
The frustrating part of this all along, of course, has been that had the government chosen simply not to count that income in the eligibility calculation for the GIS, this would have been avoided. We know that the government knew about this issue as early as May 2021, which was plenty of time to fix it before it took effect, and now we're at months after it took effect and people are in crisis.
This amendment is one of the amendments required in order not to make the pandemic benefit income non-taxable—we were very clear in our direction to the drafters that the benefit income would remain taxable income—but to remove that income from the eligibility calculation of the guaranteed income supplement.
That's the purpose of this amendment. We've been reassured by the drafters that it does this without jeopardizing the taxable status of that income. I am moving this amendment because it would help ensure that this gets cleared up and that it gets cleared up in legislation.