Mr. Speaker, after doing a hatchet job on the unemployment insurance system and offloading most of the government's spending cuts on the provinces by reducing their transfer payments, the Minister of Finance is now zeroing on his third target: old age security pensions.
Yesterday the minister announced that he would soon be meeting with his provincial counterparts to consider the future of OAS in Canada. These discussions were to be preceded by the tabling of a federal policy paper. The tabling of this document, originally scheduled for 1994, was later postponed until this fall. However, nothing has been tabled so far, and federal cutbacks are to take effect in 1997.
The minister should at least have the courage to be open about his policies and table without delay a document which senior citizens have been waiting for all this time.