Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to initiate debate on Bill C-301, although what you have just said does not augur well for the process. It is not that I wish to contest your ruling, but when it is said that the bill involves money, we need to know whose money it is. In my opinion, it already belongs to seniors, and we are not asking the government to spend any new money. The bill is merely asking it to return to senior citizens who have been deprived of the guaranteed income supplement the money to which they are entitled.
The public did not call for royal recommendation to deprive them of their due. The period of retroactivity has been reduced to 11 months since 1995; before that it was 5 years. They were not asked to consent to being deprived of their rights and the money coming to them.
I find it immoral that we cannot now call upon the government to show some conscience and provide the least advantaged of seniors with what they are entitled to, after it has used every means possible to deprive them of it.
I sat on the committee that examined the GIS question in 2001. We came to realize that 270,000 seniors among Canada's least advantaged—since those who are entitled to the supplement certainly do not have money in tax havens—have been deprived of the GIS, including 68,000 Quebeckers. The government is sitting on $3.2 billion that does not belong to it; this money belongs to seniors.
While I do not challenge the Speaker's ruling, I will never accept being told that a bill like this one cannot be voted on, on the pretext that it would deprive the government of money. That is wrong. The money in question is not the government's money but money owing to the most disadvantaged of seniors.
If you do the math, you will see that in Quebec alone since 1995 those who already have the least have been deprived of some $1 billion. Some people aged 72, 75 or 80 are having to live on $6,000 a year because they do not get the GIS, not having been properly informed about their entitlement to it. Disadvantaged seniors often live in conditions that keep them from getting the necessary information. They are not the ones responsible; the government is responsible for depriving these seniors of what they are entitled to by making the situation so complicated.
I find it totally immoral that an issue like this one can only be discussed, and not voted on. As I said at the beginning of my speech, no royal recommendation was required to deprive seniors of what they were owed.
I have toured Quebec with my colleagues from the Bloc. We have held 43 meetings across the province with seniors who were deprived of the guaranteed income supplement. The meeting in Sherbrooke comes to mind, as I was particularly struck. It was held in a church basement on a Monday afternoon, and so many people showed up that extra chairs had to be added. Three hundred and fifty people attended that meeting.
We learned that, among those present, perhaps 10 or 20 were deprived of the guaranteed income supplement. I met the daughter of an 88 year old woman who has since passed. This woman did not contribute much to society: only 10 or so children. That is already something. As Yvon Deschamps would say, she never really found time to work; she had too much to do at home. In her later years, she had to live on $6,000 a year and, after she passed, the government was left with $90,000 that belonged to her.
If a royal recommendation is required to go after that money, let us get it immediately. It makes no sense that more justice cannot be restored. It makes no sense that, while there is so much talk about all kinds of violence, we can be so violent here. No doubt about it, it was violence against this woman.
I can provide names of people this has happened to in Quebec. In my riding, there is a couple in their 70s, who thanked me because as a result of my efforts they now get $4,000 more a year. They each got $2,000 more. I asked them when this started. They told me they got only 11 months of retroactive payments. However, $4,000 a year for five years equals $20,000. The government therefore took $16,000 belonging to that couple. This is happening everywhere.
I went to Vancouver where I met with some of these people. The government brags about being good administrators. It is scandalous. They say they are good administrators, but they take money from those who are less fortunate. They can pay down the debt that way, but it is nothing to be proud of.
They say they are good administrators, but they take money from the unemployed. Again, that is nothing to be proud of. The members opposite who are bragging about achieving zero deficit on the backs of seniors, the unemployed, the sick and the provinces, certainly have no reason to claim to be good administrators. I would never admit such a thing.
My bill asks only one thing and that is to re-establish the most basic justices. Seniors are absolutely not responsible for being inadequately informed about what they are entitled to receive. Why not treat them the way we would want to be treated.
If we stop paying our taxes for five or six years, does that mean we owe the government only 11 months of back taxes? I doubt it. When we owe money to the government, it has the right to go into our wallets and take what it wants. It will even impose penalities and interest.
My bill simply asks the government to be honest. It has $3 billion that does not belong to it. There is a lack of honesty. I am sorry, but there is a lack—