Mr. Speaker, I too want to say a few words in support of the bill put forward by the member for Sudbury. I congratulate her for doing this.
In case I forget, I want to ask the member to take a look at a bill I drafted and tabled some time ago, Bill C-227. It was a bill to investigate the difficulties encountered by seniors when they deal with the Canada pension plan, the old age pensions and the different tax liabilities. It might be complementary to what she is trying to do. I had some help on that by people who were experts in the field. It might be something worth looking at.
In any event, I do support the bill put forward in the House today. We are an aging society. I just looked at some recent statistics showing that in the year 2000 some 16.7% of our population was over 60 years old. In the year 2050, another 50 years from now, the population over 60 years of age will be 31.9%. In other words, Mr. Speaker, 50 years from now you will be among the oldest one-third of the Canadian population. That will be getting up there in age by that time of course. We are an aging society and the baby boom is going through the cycle.
I suppose one of the deficiencies in our social system has been in making sure our older people, our senior citizens, get a decent, fair and just break in our society.
I have been a member of Parliament now for about 32 years. I was elected in 1968 and was out for one term. I have had my attention drawn many times to elder abuse. It occurs in all kinds of places and forms that we would not expect: abusive families, abuse between spouses, abuse between strangers and elders, and patronizing attitudes toward senior citizens. One sees and hears about it all the time. It is something for which we have to be concerned in terms of discrimination based on age.
One reason for referring the bill to committee for study is that there are all kinds of aspects of how we should be treating senior citizens better which we can study at the same time.
I am glad the member has taken the initiative in this bill to get the ball rolling and establish an ombudsman for older adult justice and the Canadian older adult justice agency and amendments to the Criminal Code. Of course that would include the Prime Minister of Canada as well. We may have to be very careful with how we question him in question period.
I think the bill is a move in the right direction and it is something we should be supporting. It is not right to discriminate against anyone on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, colour, religious background or on the basis of age, and that certainly does occur.
Some day in this country we will have a serious debate on an issue called mandatory retirement. I happen to agree with the Prime Minister of Canada that age 65 should not be a mandatory retirement age. I think that is discrimination based on age. At the same time, we have to make sure that people have adequate pensions so they can make a real choice as to whether they can retire at the age of 65.
We have made progress since the 1930s and 1940s on pensions, on seniors and on poverty, but I do not think that progress has been continuing on in the last 10 or 15 years as it was in the previous 25 or 30 years. It has levelled off. We have a lot of senior citizens living in poverty and below the poverty line.
Those are some of my concerns. We need an improved pension system. We need to improve the Canada pension plan so people will have a more adequate income. Private pension plans have to be more portable. We need to ensure that we have a retirement safety net for people so they can have a decent living and not live in poverty after they retire.
I remember growing up on the Prairies and believing all my life that it was the older people who built Canada, the pioneers who came out to my part of the world, Saskatchewan, which became a province in 1905.
Actually my father was born at the end of 1909. He was one of the last pioneers in this country in terms of filing for a homestead under the homestead act. He had one of the last homesteads in central Saskatchewan.
People of my grandparents' generation born in the last part of the 1800s and into the early 1900s were the real pioneers. They built a country through sweat and tears and hard work. They made many sacrifices and passed on a pretty good country to all of us. It is imperative for us now to make sure we treat our senior citizens with respect and dignity and to provide the financial means to make sure that they can live a decent life.
I am also concerned about adequate health care. We have across the way the sponsor of the bill who is a former minister of health. She knows the challenges in that field and the challenges that we have now. At one time the federal government paid half the cost of health care and the provinces paid half, but now the provinces put up over 80% of the health care cost. This is a big issue. The senior citizens use the health care system more than any other citizen. If we have a squeeze for health care, it is the senior citizens that tend to suffer more than anyone else. We need more money from the federal government for health care as well.
I have mentioned an adequate pension system. I have mentioned the need for more adequate health care and the concern that I have that a lot of people are living in poverty. Those are some of the other issues we have to wrestle with.
The pension issue is a very important one because of the aging of the population. We have to make sure that we can afford to pay adequate pensions for people when they retire, whatever that retirement age should be.
I remember when the member was a cabinet minister. An idea was floated by the Liberal government of the day which was called the seniors benefit package and was part of the present Prime Minister's deficit cutting strategy. The legislation, had it passed, would have done away with the last social program that was specifically there to help seniors, namely the Old Age Security Act. It is thanks to the intense lobby of senior citizens, the public and the opposition that this idea was dropped.
I also remember back in the Mulroney days when the Conservatives wanted to partially deindex old age pensions. There are a couple of Mulroney fans sitting here in the House of Commons, members of the Conservative Party. In the end the Conservatives did that.
I remember when they brought it in. Mulroney was very popular in 1985. There was a big rally here in the House of Commons. I see two Brian Mulroney fans sitting in the House, one from Yorkton—Melville and one from Ontario, two Conservative MPs. In 1985 there was a big rally in the House. A little woman named Madam Denis, who probably stood about 4 feet 10 inches, said in French to the Prime Minister, “Vous avez menti, vous avez menti”. She said to the Prime Minister, “You have lied to us”.
I remember the galvanizing of public opinion at that moment. I think the member for Sudbury became a member in 1988 and this occurred before she came to the House. I remember how the public opinion at that time galvanized and changed because of Madam Denis.
The grey lobby is increasing in size. It is politically a very potent force out there and an important force. The senior citizens should be listened to. When governments have tried to tinker with programs that they hold dear, and I have mentioned a couple of examples, there have been very effective protests by senior citizens. This is something we should pay heed to. They are our constituents and a very important part of our constituency.
The member for Sudbury makes some excellent points in the legislation. One of the points is that there are crimes being committed against seniors. We have heard about different scams and different con artists that prey on seniors, who telephone them with different ideas about where they should put their money. I have had cases where seniors have called my office after being taken by con artists on different schemes. They go after seniors because they feel they are vulnerable. In many cases it is older women who they feel are vulnerable and they take their money.
In summary, I commend the member for Sudbury. We should send the bill to committee. We should study the whole area of how we treat seniors and make sure we have a fair and just society for them in the years that lie ahead.