Status of Women Committee on April 16th, 2026

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

You're absolutely right. We all know seniors who struggle to buy groceries at the end of the month. I've met some. I've seen people take items out of their grocery cart. It's disturbing when you see things like that.

I was a member of another association that advocated for seniors. I can tell you that I met people who would cut their pills to make sure they could afford food at the end of the month. You can see that financial insecurity has no age. Creating two classes of seniors hurts people. It prevents people from living with dignity.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

You were interrupted at one point because there was a lot to say. I want to give you time to finish what you were saying. You had started talking about a survey. I was noting the figure of 43.3%.

I know my colleague wanted to ask another question. However, if it can inform us, could you provide some data and statistics that would be relevant for the study?

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

The survey was conducted by our association.

It was on the financial vulnerability of solo women retirees. It noted that 43.3% of solo women struggle to financially afford the basics of life, and 23.8% of solo women experienced financial insecurity at least once in the last six months.

Here are some interesting comments from those women:

“After my husband died, my household income was reduced by only $10,000, and my tax liability increased by $20,000.”

“There is no money left for the last 2 weeks of the month for food/gas.”

“I struggle to buy food and medications and often go without one or the other.”

“Most of the household expenses stay the same, but now there is only one income to cover these.”

Those comments point to glaring and disturbing problems.

Thank you.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

This might be a quick solution.

You refer a lot to solo women. Would an incentive for those seniors who want to end their isolation by going to work be something to look at? The incentive would help them increase their income, but would not cause them to lose their guaranteed income supplement.

That was in the previous bill, by the way, and is also included in Bill C‑261, which we just introduced.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much. That concludes your time, Madame Larouche, with my apologies.

We'll now move on to Ms. Roberts for five minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

This is a desperately important topic, because as we all know and as Ms. Talia Bronstein stated earlier, women tend to live longer than men.

My question is for Ms. Bronstein.

Single seniors, when their spouses pass, lose a large portion of income, which was stated earlier. Tax fairness is different for a couple as opposed to a single senior. How can we adjust that so that single seniors aren't suffering a loss of income? As my colleague Madame Larouche said earlier, the expenses are not that much different. What suggestions would you have for the government to assist a widowed senior who has lost a spouse and now does not have that same advantage?

[Talia Bronstein]

The challenge with our retirement income system is that it's highly complex. It is very individualistic in terms of how someone engages with it. It depends on your RRSP contributions and withdrawals, your RRIFs, your OAS and when you take OAS, and when you take CPP. It's a highly complex system.

The unfortunate reality is that, while we've seen huge progress in reducing poverty among older adults, poverty remains. Our survey shows that older women are much more likely to experience what we call “material deprivation”, meaning they're not meeting a basic standard of living, so we know there is a problem to be solved. As you said, women are more likely to be widows and to live alone, so challenges, like affording a house as a single individual or even a rental unit, are much harder as an individual than as a couple, potentially.

My unfortunate answer is that this needs to be looked at in the much broader context of our retirement income system, because these pieces interact in very complex ways. We've actually called for a review of the retirement income system, bringing in the equity lens to understand who is benefiting, where there are shortfalls and how we can address some of the challenges.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

I recently met with a senior. She and her sister lived together. Neither was ever married. They were both professionals. They had saved some money, and because of good health, one of the sisters is still alive today. Unfortunately, one died at a very young age, and she didn't even have the opportunity to collect her CPP.

She asked me this question: “What happens to that money that my sister contributed since she was 16 years old working and paying into CPP?” Now she is left with the home they purchased together. The bills are still the same, but now she's reduced to one income. She explained to me that she had no choice but to sell the home and move into an apartment.

Here's the dilemma. She applied for a rental that's geared to income, and the wait time is eight years. The only apartment she could find was a basement apartment where the rent is $2,000 a month. How do we explain things to this particular individual, who chose this type of lifestyle and now can't even afford her rent each month?

[Talia Bronstein]

Housing is huge cost for any household, so we need to tackle the housing side. That's a whole area that needs work.

I want to comment on the CPP side. In a lot of private pension plans, there is a mechanism that benefits the estate when an individual dies and they had contributed to a pension plan. The CPP doesn't have that built in, and that's why we've proposed a pension delay guarantee. It would essentially reimburse the estate for benefits that had not been received by an individual in the case of an untimely death.

It's a cost-effective mechanism that would greatly improve retirement financial security, because it would nudge people to delay their CPP if they could afford it. It would benefit estates that have an unexpected, untimely death, which is thankfully a rare occurrence. There wouldn't be a huge price tag, because not that many people fall into that category. For those estates, it would cause people a lot of comfort knowing that some of the CPP benefits that had been contributed to would actually come back to the estate.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

I'm sorry, Ms. Roberts, but that concludes your time.

We'll now move on to Mr. Chen for five minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Today, we’ve heard from a number of witnesses. Thank you all for being here.

I've heard a number of people speak about women bearing the brunt of unpaid work, whether that is child care or having to take time off work for family and other needs. Do you have any solutions to propose in which that can be accounted for? As has been stated, too often the income supports provided to older women are dependent on their previous contributions and earnings. What are some ways we can account for this unpaid work so that women are not penalized?

[Talia Bronstein]

It's important to note, first of all, that anywhere between 14% and 25% of older adults are caregivers. That burden disproportionately falls on women, who contribute more caregiving hours.

The National Institute on Ageing has endorsed the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence's national caregiving strategy, which has a number of excellent recommendations. I think the most important one is to address the income challenge, which is by and large the number one issue that caregivers raise as their challenge.

A feasible option that the government could do right now would be to change the Canada caregiver tax credit to a refundable tax credit. That was in a mandate letter, so I know it's on the government's radar. It's time to make that change, because that would directly benefit caregivers by ensuring that they have that income support.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Excellent. Thank you.

I'll turn to Ms. Chaudry, who spoke earlier about trauma-informed financial education and programs that are community-driven and community-delivered. How can the government better support these programs and ensure that they are more widely available, particularly in the context of diverse communities? As you mentioned, racialized women face particular barriers and have experiences of discrimination, all of which add an extra layer of complexity to the challenges that older women face.

[Jehan Chaudry]

There are some organizations like ours, like the clinic, doing some of this work—doing workshops with older women, for women specifically. I'm speaking from Toronto, and here at least three organizations do that. However, once the workshop is over, then it's over. What needs to be done is keeping that connection afterward. Even in the two cohorts we've had, we've seen that women not only learned from the workshops, but also created a network among themselves when the groups are over.

There needs to be more funding available for organizations to carry this through and for other organizations to do that. We also need to share what has been learned from what we're doing. For example, we have an evaluation after every cohort to see what is happening, what has worked or what hasn't worked. Funding is one of the criteria.

Another thing that can be done is reaching out to specific groups in culturally and linguistically appropriate ways, finding out what else can be done and working through them. A lot of women in our groups don't speak the English language, and they are the ones who feel the isolation more.

It's about funding, of course, and also reaching out to organizations that already do the work, learning from that and then expanding from there.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

It sounds like your organization and a number of others are doing good work in this area. Have you reached all the women who need to be reached through your programs, or are there a lot more who have not been supported?

[Jehan Chaudry]

There are lot more who would find the information very useful. We could reach out to a lot more.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr. Chen.

Now we'll move on to Madame Larouche for two and a half minutes, please.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We're talking about the precarious situation of seniors, some of whom live on fixed incomes. Let's look, in particular, at the old age security pension or the guaranteed income supplement.

Allow me to draw a link to a recent news story on the subject. When payments to people who rely solely on those benefits are delayed because of the new Cúram system, can it cause economic instability and create additional stress for seniors?

What impact could the situation have on people in that position?

My question is for Ms. Bronstein or Ms. Tassé‑Goodman.

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

The consequences can be devastating, as I've said.

Not being able to pay rent at the end of the month and fearing eviction from their home is quite upsetting for seniors. Knowing that they can't afford their groceries or—as the survey we conducted with the University of Ottawa showed—that they can afford groceries for only two weeks of the month, is quite sad. Some people also decide to stop buying their medication.

You can see how alarming it is for some seniors who are not receiving all they're entitled to. I shouldn't say their due, but they're entitled to the benefits that government programs have put in place.

That's why it's important to have a comprehensive plan, one that brings all departments together to consider the needs of seniors.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I understand that it's a big deal, even if the delay is just a few months. Given that the system is changing, the consequences can be quite serious. That's what you're saying.

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

It can also lead to very serious consequences for physical health and safety. You know, those are also causes of isolation. People stop going out because they know they can't afford transportation, food, housing or even their medication.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Bronstein, speaking of insecurity, we've learned that homelessness among seniors is increasing.

There are apparently hundreds of thousands of people experiencing some form of homelessness. How many of them are seniors?

Can your organization give us any figures on that?

[Talia Bronstein]

I don't have the numbers on me, but I can certainly provide them to the committee afterwards.

It's absolutely a growing problem. It's important to remember that shelters are not designed for older adults. They're not designed with physical accessibility in mind in that way. They're not designed to store and dispense medications. They're not the right environment for older adults. We want to make sure they have accessible affordable housing.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much.

I'm going on to Ms. Goodridge. I realize that we have five minutes remaining.

Ms. Goodridge and Mr. Louis, you both have five minutes. Do you want to divide that by two, or do you want to extend the meeting by five minutes? It's up to you guys.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Unlike all of you guys from Ontario, I have to catch a flight, so let's divide it.