Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources Development. I cannot imagine that she believes everything she is saying.
The government has done nothing for eight years. It is beyond belief that the entire government machinery, and you, the people in power, have been unaware that for eight years you have been depriving seniors of their just due.
These people are constituents of mine living under the poverty level. These people came to see me in my office and said, “Madame Bujold, what can we do? We are unable to make ends meet. We receive our Canada pension cheque and we cannot make ends meet”. I could not believe it. I told myself it made no sense.
The Canada pension cheque and the guaranteed income supplement are supposed to help people stay above the poverty line. I did not understand what these people meant. I told myself, “They used to pay taxes to the government. People who helped to build the country, build the regions, are not supposed to be left in poverty”.
The parliamentary secretary has the nerve to tell them now that it was a committee which uncovered this flaw in the system, when this has been going on for eight years. On top of that, the government is refusing to make the payments retroactive.
In my riding, if I had not been there to visit some women individually at home in order to help them fill out their forms, they would never have received anything. The government was doing nothing. I was the one who told them, “We will help you fill them out”. The parliamentary secretary can tell us that it was uncovered because of the committee, but the government would have done nothing if the Bloc Quebecois had not intervened.
I have nothing against her. What I am angry at is the system, which has allowed this unfair treatment of seniors to drag on and on. It is unbelievable. In my riding, people have been deprived of $90,000 for eight years. What is $90,000? It may not be much for the member opposite, but for people who have lived in poverty for eight years, it is a lot of money.
Poverty leads to physical and psychological decline and has a negative impact on the family. Seniors use the most medication. Why? Because there was a flaw in the system which the member was unaware of.
She must stop blaming the public servants. The government is there to ensure that all Canadians who have paid taxes get their fair share from the system. She must stop saying that it is the public servants' fault. I am not blaming public servants, I am blaming the government. It knew. It is impossible that the parliamentary secretary has not had, as I have, people coming to see her in her riding to tell her that they did not understand the form. She is in her second term, so she must have had people like that in her office. And she did not see that something was wrong.
How many times did we tell them that this did not make any sense? Public servants replied, “What can I say, madam, it is the government that allows that”. I am not accusing them, but I am accusing the government of doing nothing about it.
Today, the parliamentary secretary had the gall to say that these people will not receive any retroactive payments. It is their money. Does that mean that this money that the government has saved was used elsewhere, and used to pay down the debt or to reward the government's friends? I will never accept that.
We will have to look closely at the situation of seniors one of these days. Living conditions have changed. Housing is very expensive. Seniors are increasingly in need of services.
I am asking the parliamentary secretary to rise and tell the House today, May 10, that the government will grant retroactivity to seniors for what they were denied for eight years.