Women who are immigrants and men who are immigrants are in a particularly difficult situation because they may not have been in Canada long enough to qualify for certain benefits. For example, as I think you've already been told by other witnesses, to get OAS or CPP you must have been in Canada at least ten years.
People have told me, in meetings, of older family members who have come in as family class immigrants and can't qualify for those benefits because they haven't been here ten years. Other people who have been in the paid workforce, but maybe not as long as Canadian-born people, will not have as many years and therefore will not get as much in benefits.
For example, for old age security you get a pro-rated benefit, depending on how long you've been in the country. Canada Pension Plan is based on your contributions.
There are problems with the CPP for immigrants too, because the benefits are calculated based on a contributory period that starts at age 18. You may not have been in the country at age 18, but nevertheless it goes back then.
One of the recommendations I've made in my report here is that we look at how we calculate those benefits so that we take into account people who haven't been in the country that long.
Canada has social security agreements with a number of countries that allow immigrants from those countries to use years that they contributed to the social security programs in their home country and add them to what they've done in Canada, to improve their benefits.
But we don't have social security agreements with all countries, and in fact for the countries where most recent immigrants come from--in Southeast Asia--we don't have agreements with many of those countries, and many of those countries don't have the same kinds of social security programs we have.
So it is a big problem for immigrants, and I think it's one we need to have a special study on to see how we could adjust our programs to give better benefits to immigrants who perhaps haven't been in the country that long.