Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Parliamentarians, my name is Gisèle Tassé‑Goodman. I'm the president of the Réseau FADOQ. I'm joined by Danis Prud'homme, the director general of our organization. I want to thank the committee members for this invitation.
The Réseau FADOQ consists of a group of people aged 50 and over. The group has nearly 550,000 members. Each time that we take political action, we want to help improve the quality of life of seniors.
Sadly, seniors were the first victims of COVID‑19. The people who receive only old age security benefits and the guaranteed income supplement must live on less than $18,500 a year. It was hard enough to live on this income before. The onset of the health and social crisis exacerbated this financial distress, since prices for basic necessities increased. In addition, given the lockdown, many seniors temporarily lost their support network. This led to additional costs, especially for delivery services.
In the end, the government provided a one‑time payment to seniors who were struggling to make ends meet last summer. Obviously, the Réseau FADOQ would have preferred that the government speed up the implementation of the old age security increase promised in 2019. This improvement was ultimately announced in the latest federal budget. Any improvement is welcome. However, the Réseau FADOQ believes that people aged 65 to 74 should also benefit from it. The government must review this proposal to avoid creating two classes of seniors.
As president of the Réseau FADOQ, I must point out the elephant in the room. A great deal has been said about residential and long‑term care facilities. Many seniors have paid the price for a flawed health care system during this health and social crisis. In reality, the provinces are chronically underfunded by the federal government when it comes to health care.
Granted, some money has been provided during the current crisis and the latest federal budget proposes investments in long‑term care. However, this support is neither recurring nor proportional. Health care funding takes up 40% of provincial and territorial budgets, while the Canadian government funds only 22% of the spending.
According to the Conference Board of Canada, based on the current growth rate of the Canada health transfer, the federal share of health care funding will drop to less than 20% by 2026.
The Réseau FADOQ is asking the federal government to increase the indexing of the Canada health transfer by 6% each year, in other words, to its pre‑2017 level.
The Canada health transfer must also take into account the aging population of the provinces and territories.
The COVID‑19 crisis has exposed significant shortcomings in terms of financial literacy and the affordability of Internet services. This reality has left many seniors doubly isolated, both physically and virtually.
The Réseau FADOQ is actively working to strengthen digital literacy among its members through training workshops. This type of initiative deserves more government support.
Moreover, Internet service packages are very expensive and seniors have limited incomes. The federal government must improve competition among service providers so that more affordable Internet packages are available to everyone.
I want to thank the committee members for listening. Mr. Prud'homme will answer questions. However, I'll reserve the right to answer them as well.
Thank you.