Human Resources Committee on Feb. 20th, 2007

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Yes. Let's suppose, for example, that I'm entitled to the Guaranteed Income Supplement. I have an income, and I file an income tax return, but I don't clearly understand the language or I have a disability. There are many reasons why a person does not file an application. Would filing my income tax return be sufficient to get the Guaranteed Income Supplement?

[Marla Israel]

Thank you for your question.

If a person's income makes that person eligible for the program, but that person does not file the initial application to receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement or Old Age Security, we'll send that person one or the other of those benefits. It's an implementation question. Since that person hasn't filed an initial application, that person will be sent the benefit for which he or she is eligible based on income. Once that person has filed an initial application, it will be valid for the rest of his or her life.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

So you are going to monitor whether the person hasn't filed an application and you believe that he or she is eligible?

[Marla Israel]

Yes.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Are you going to follow up in order to take action with that person?

[Marla Israel]

Absolutely.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I'm going to go back to past years. As you said so well, Ms. Scotti, we discovered in 2001 that 300,000 individuals were entitled to the Guaranteed Income Supplement but were not claiming it. In Quebec, there were 68,000 persons. If we were able to state the number of persons, that means that we knew who they were.

As you'll no doubt remember, the Bloc québécois, more particularly the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain, Mr. Gagnon, traced 42,000 of those individuals. That represented the sum of $95 million, which is enormous. During all those years, those people were entitled to this supplement, but were not getting it.

Why weren't they getting it, whereas the Income Tax Act enabled us to reach them and to pay them their Guaranteed Income Supplement?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Just a quick response, as we're out of time.

[Susan Scotti]

Will you give me...? Should I answer?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Yes, definitely, please answer the question.

[Susan Scotti]

There may be a variety of reasons why these people were not eligible. They may not have had the necessary years of residence, or their income situation may have changed. So over and above the fact that they might not have known they had to apply, there might have been reasons in their instance for why they may not have been eligible for the benefit. There are also many cases of eligible seniors who have declined the benefit, for a variety of reasons, and don't ever want to apply. And there are lags in time in terms of when the department obtains tax data, mails an application, receives it back and determines eligibility.

So there are a variety of reasons why you may have a certain number of people who are not obtaining the benefit at any one point in time. I don't know the numbers, because I don't recall the figures that were in that report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have. Maybe someone else will pick up the question.

We're going to move to Ms. Charlton, for seven minutes please.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I have a number of questions. The first one, though, is just a clarification. In regard to interest recovery, I thought I heard you say that interest would not apply for overpayments made to seniors. Is that right?

[Susan Scotti]

That's correct.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

So am I misreading proposed subsection 66(2.01), which says, "Interest payable under this Part constitutes a debt due to Her Majesty..."?

[Susan Scotti]

Here's the sequence that's going to happen. Currently the Financial Administration Act requires that we pay interest. Because there's a void in the current OAS legislation, and consequently in the CPP, saying you don't have to pay interest, the rules of the Financial Administration Act apply by default. So what we're doing here is amending the legislation so that it explicitly states we will not require interest—

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I'm sorry, but where is that amendment?

[Susan Scotti]

We would provide regulation-making authority to articulate the circumstances under which—

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Okay, so I won't actually find it in here?

[Susan Scotti]

No, you won't find it in there.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Okay, but you're promising me it'll be in the regulations?

[Susan Scotti]

The details will definitely be in the regulations, yes.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Okay, that's all good.

Let me just ask a couple of other questions. There are some larger policy questions that I know aren't appropriate to put to you at this time, but with respect to the GIS, can you explain to me whom those people might be who would say, oh no, I don't want to collect the GIS when I'm eligible for it, because I have too much money already? It just seem inconceivable to me that this check-off box needs to be there, when we're trying so hard to reach potential GIS recipients.

Why add that extra barrier to them getting their benefits?

[Marla Israel]

I hear you.

A lot of the times I think the impression is left that governments have a lot of information already and that the information is shared. To a certain extent, it is. The relationships between the Canada Revenue Agency and this department have improved significantly over the years.

Let me give you an example. When a person applies for the old age security benefit, it's based on a person's individual residence. On the application form, there's no need to inquire about marital status or a person's income. That's an important consideration for the guaranteed income supplement, because you need that information in order to assess accurately the payment of the benefit.

On income tax information alone, we wouldn't have the information with respect to marital status and not necessarily with respect to the person's residence. So that's why you need to apply initially and provide us with the information.

At the end of the day, the onus will be on the program administrators to find those people, for example, whose income fluctuates and they ticked the box indicating yes, I want to be considered entitled to the guaranteed income supplement for as long as I'm eligible. Then we'll get the information from CRA, and we'll have to go to those people to confirm their marital status, where they're living, and so on.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

That's where the disconnect is for me. In the out-years beyond year one, you have the kind of relationship with CRA in which you're confident that you can get the information to get the benefit to as many people as possible. Yet in year one, that's not possible. I'm not understanding why that's the case.

The government's done a terrific job. Because of outreach activities that have been undertaken, we've reduced the number of people who aren't eligible for the GIS, but there are still huge barriers. One of the biggest barriers is literacy.

So even in year one, the fact that we need people to fill out forms for a benefit, which we can readily identify through the taxation system, seems to me to be an unnecessary barrier.

I'm still not really understanding why the out-years are different from the first year in that regard.