Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have an opportunity to speak in support of Bill C-301 as put forward by my colleague from Saint-Maurice—Champlain.
I want to begin by recognizing and paying tribute to the dedication and commitment that my colleague from Saint-Maurice—Champlain has shown to this issue. He has been tireless and has not given up in the face of adversity. Where many would have tired from running into the brick wall, he has persisted, and I appreciate him giving us this opportunity to have this debate today.
As the member for Winnipeg Centre, I also want to recognize and pay tribute to a former member from my riding of Winnipeg Centre, who we can safely call the father of the Canadian pension system. In 1925 the member for Winnipeg Centre, J.S. Woodsworth, was the founder and first leader of my party, then called the CCF. In fact, in those days it was called the Independent Labour Party.
J.S. Woodsworth was in a minority government situation with William Lyon Mackenzie King. In exchange for supporting Mackenzie King's government, he obtained a letter to the effect that to get the Independent Labour Party's votes, Mackenzie King would bring in an old age pension plan.
It is ironic that only a few years before this, the Government of Canada wanted to send J.S. Woodsworth to prison for his role as a leader of the 1919 Winnipeg general strike. However, in 1921 the good people of my riding sent him to Ottawa to be their member of Parliament, and within four years he had negotiated a pension plan for Canadians.
I would be remiss if I did not also mention another member who represented the riding of Winnipeg Centre from 1942 to 1984. That was Stanley Knowles, who many people will recognize not only built on the work J.S. Woodsworth had done but had the Canada pension plan indexed so it would grow with inflation.
The people of Winnipeg Centre are very cognizant of who was the champion of their pension system. I think they would appreciate, in the twilight days of the 38th Parliament, that we are again seized of the issue of old age security and the guaranteed income supplement, thanks to my colleague from Saint-Maurice—Champlain.
The government has known for years that 380,000 seniors who were eligible for the guaranteed income supplement were not getting it because they never applied. It knows this because of income tax records. It has known full well who these individuals were and even how much they were eligible for, but it never told them.
When we learned this, partly through the research of my colleague, we were shocked. These are the poorest of the poor. To be eligible for the guaranteed income supplement, one's income has to be around $12,000 a year. That is to get the full income supplement. These are desperately poor seniors.
The excuse the government gave was it would be a violation of their privacy rights for Revenue Canada to inform HRSD that certain individuals were eligible for the plan. What an absurd notion that anyone would complain the government misused privileged information in order to give seniors a benefit.
A glaring contradiction exists. If people collecting employment insurance cross the border, the border crossing officer tells EI that these people are leaving the country and the individual should not be because they are collecting benefits. Therefore, the government does not mind violating a person's privacy to rat them out, but it will not violate a person's privacy to give them a benefit. That was absurd. I reject that position and I condemn the government for that position.
Now we have heard the parliamentary secretary, a Liberal from Montreal, say that one of the reasons the government does not want to provide the retroactivity that is called for in Bill C-301 is because the government is worried about opening the floodgates to fraud. Are the Liberals serious? Are they seriously trying to maintain that it is a bad idea to give seniors money that is rightfully theirs because they are worried about fraudulent activity?
These are desperately poor Canadian seniors. If that is the barrier, let me dismiss that out of hand immediately. The government should go back to the drawing board to try to come up with a more credible excuse because that one is spurious.
I do not think we should be having this debate today. I believe the two things that are called for by my colleague's bill are eminently justifiable. The first thing is that eligibility should be based on one's income, not on whether or not the proper paperwork has been filled out. In other words, the guaranteed annual income supplement should be guaranteed, not subject to crossing the right t 's and dotting the right i 's. That is the first point my colleague makes.
The second point he makes is retroactivity. In those cases where people come to the realization that they have been eligible for the guaranteed income supplement for a number of years and, for whatever reason, failed to apply, that benefit should be retroactive to the date they became eligible, not 11 months as stipulated under the Old Age Security Act. It may be three years or five years, who cares? We should give them what they are owed.
Members can just imagine what a difference that would make in a senior's life. Let us think of the constituents we are talking about here, the poorest of the poor of our Canadian seniors, the people the social safety net has left behind. Imagine that small influx of money. It may be $20,000 or $30,000 in some cases, if the retroactivity went a few years. It is not a huge amount of money but it would improve the quality of life for those seniors in their remaining years. It would seem like a windfall to them and it would not break the bank of the federal government, as my colleague, the Liberal member from Lachine, would have us believe.
Let us go through the barriers thrown up by the Liberal government in trying to argue against these eminently good ideas.
First are the privacy provisions. I put it to members that any senior who was eligible for a benefit and was not getting it would thank someone for informing the officials that they were eligible and would not be filing any complaints with the Privacy Commissioner that somebody violated their right to privacy.
In terms of worrying about fraud, I do not even think that deserves my time here. Eligible seniors would come forward and make it known that they were making application for this benefit and the government should deal with it as any other eligibility for a government program.
The last thing concerns the retroactivity being an undue burden on the federal government. We have just learned it has a $13.5 billion surplus. Liberals are flying around the country as we speak in a spending spree that is hitherto unprecedented in this country. A Roman orgy of spending is going on as we speak. Am I being told that we cannot find enough money to provide for the basic needs of seniors to survive, to pay them the money that was owed to them, money that, by trickery and deceit, was kept away from them?
I do not say that to be romantic or to use exaggerated language. It was by deceit that these people were denied the benefits to which they were entitled. I can defend the use of that language because the Government of Canada knew who they were, and has known for years that they were eligible, and failed to tell them. If there is any fraud taking place here it is on the part of the Government of Canada for not doing the right thing for the senior citizens who were eligible for this benefit.
I am glad we are using this day, maybe one of the last sitting days of this 38th Parliament, to do something to augment the quality of life and the standard of living of our seniors. I compliment my colleague from Saint-Maurice--Champlain for bringing it forward. I will be voting with enthusiasm for this bill and out of respect for those who came before me representing the riding of Winnipeg Centre.