Mr. Speaker, I have spoken with family members who are facing the very troubling situation of their mothers or grandmothers who now are having to look at selling the family home. They can no longer maintain the family home. They cannot pay for the heating. They cannot pay rising costs. They literally cannot afford to maintain the normality that they have spent their lives building up and that their husbands or partners also built up.
It seems so terribly unfair that just because people's partners have passed away one day before this absolutely arbitrary cut-off date those people are not able to get the kind of help they need just to maintain their lives. We are not talking about an enormous number of people. We are talking about a very small portion of our population, 28,000 people altogether, aged people who are facing complex health needs who all of their lives have been involved in the military culture, who have in fact given enormously. They have seen their husbands go away for long stretches of time, live in dangerous situations and then come back disabled. They have dealt with complex stress and disability issues all of their lives.
Then, for them to be told at the very end of their lives that there is not anything for them, that in fact a decision was made but unfortunately they are not going to be cared for, it is just not the Canadian way. It is very troubling.