I want to thank both of you for coming to present to us. As Mr Mayes said, we appreciate your thoughts, especially with last week and this week. It has been a very emotional and difficult week for everyone.
It also makes you reflect. One of the key things I hear about from everybody nowadays is how expensive it is to die. They look at the cost of funerals and all the pain and agony about communications. That is definitely a key concern, especially for seniors. I hear from them all the time. They're worried about how their expenses are going to be covered.
At the same time I want to thank, through you, all the people who do the job that you do and who work in the funeral homes and memorial homes in order to make that time as reasonably palatable as possible. It's a very difficult time, and I appreciate the emotions.
I want to talk about the stress on the system. There is no doubt that over the last number of years our public services, especially at the federal level, have felt a horrendous squeeze. Whenever we get a new program or a consolidation announced, there is the idea that because you pass a piece of legislation everything is going to happen just like that, but as with anything, once you have new legislation there needs to be an implementation plan that's reasonable and which has training.
Mr. McCuaig, I'm very sensitive to the comment you made that it's about staffing. It is about staffing, but it's also about the training that is required. To receive a phone call from someone, or to be in contact with someone who has just lost a loved one...my experience has been that it doesn't matter whether it's your child or your parent or your siblings, when you lose a loved one, you're very vulnerable, very emotional. The person at Service Canada is going to need training in order to interact with people who are phoning in. I absolutely agree that we will need to have that kind of training in place.
In the long term, maybe five or ten years down the road, maybe even sooner, there might be savings with this model, but I don't think this legislation was brought here by Mr. Valeriote because he is trying to save dollars. I believe he brought this legislation here because it's the right thing to do. It will alleviate a lot of personal pain. With respect to people receiving pensions when they shouldn't because their loved one has died, I hear about that all the time, and the kind of angst that places on the families.
The other issue is when they get phone calls from people like us. There are deceased people who are still on the Elections Canada list. Someone has to say, “Sorry, my dad passed away”. You feel bad. There is a lot of work that we can do to coordinate.
My question is for you, Mr. McCuaig.
What kind of a timeline would you like to see, and what kind of a transition process would be the most acceptable when you're dealing with sensitive legislation that aims to make life less onerous for those who have lost a loved one? We want to do it right.
