Mr. Speaker, this legislation is about implementing the budget delivered in the House on February 23, which implements many of the commitments made to Canadians by the government during the last election campaign and which were reaffirmed and expanded on in the Speech from the Throne. The budget is about planning for the future. What is going to be done to make this a better country, to make our communities better and to make life better for all Canadians?
I want to talk today about the fastest growing segment of our population and that is people over the age of 65. In particular, my riding has the third highest proportion of seniors of any constituency right across Canada, second only to Victoria and St. Catharines.
Measures in the budget to make seniors' lives better are extremely important. That is why I want to offer one comment on their behalf to the member who just spoke, because part of planning for the future is paying off one's debt. The seniors I speak about this morning have lived a long time. They have owned homes, they have had mortgages and they know the value of paying off one's debt or credit cards and saving on interest, which the opposite side seems not to understand. Perhaps opposition members prefer to see us continue to have rising interest payments rather than paying off debt and saving $3 billion a year on interest payments, which is money that we can invest in programs that are important for our citizens.
Obviously for many seniors who raised their families and grew old through much more difficult times than we are experiencing in this country today, enough to live on with dignity and comfort in retirement is extremely important. That is why a number of measures in the budget are very important to seniors.
For one thing, the guaranteed income supplement that goes to any Canadian senior below a certain level of income is increasing for the first time since 1984. There have been annual increases to cover the cost of living, but for the first time in 21 years there is an increase in the budget to the basic amount of guaranteed income supplement. That will benefit single seniors to the extent of $400 a year and couples by $700.
In total, that is an amount of $2.7 billion being dedicated to our lowest income seniors. The amount of $2.7 billion happens to be coincidentally close to the amount we are saving on interest payments every year because of the debt repayment that the government has made with its surpluses.
The other important thing for seniors on low incomes is increasing the basic income tax deduction to $10,000. When fully implemented, this will take 240,000 low income seniors totally off the tax rolls of Canada.
As people live longer, they are also staying more active. That is why the new horizons program is very important. In my riding there are numerous volunteer organizations, many of them run by seniors themselves. They provide programs and activities and get people out of their homes and involved with the community. I am pleased to note that we will be more than doubling the new horizons program in the next two years from $10 million to $25 million, allowing for more programs for seniors, more activities and more involvement with the community.
Many seniors are not so lucky and in fact need caregiving either by family or somebody else outside the home. That is a very expensive thing for families or for the seniors themselves. This budget doubles from $5,000 to $10,000 the amount that can be deducted in regard to the costs to provide the care for someone who needs it, care that costs money.
Increasingly this population will require special measures in a large number of areas. It will be an ever more significant part of the population of Canada. That is why establishing an national seniors secretariat to look at the ongoing and new needs of seniors is extremely important. I mentioned that many seniors stay much more active, much longer, but living longer also means more health problems such as mobility and eyesight. What we have invested in health care is also extremely important to seniors.
I know there is a lot of skepticism about whether the additional nearly $100 billion since 2001 we are giving to the provinces for health care is going to really make a difference. The difference this time is we have agreed targets with the provinces for improving wait times by two years from now. That amount of money also contributes to ambulatory and community care for people who need it, that includes a lot of seniors. The focus is very much on those diseases and conditions that affect seniors such as joint replacement, cancer, heart problems, and ensuring that diagnosis and treatment is available faster.
However, just as important is the money we are investing in public health. If we need more and more health care and treatment of illnesses, which does happen with an aging population, one of the ways to keep our public health care system sustainable is to ensure we do everything possible to keep Canadians as healthy as possible. In a couple of weeks I will be holding a forum in Ottawa West--Nepean with the Minister of Public Health to get the ideas from our community on how we keep all our citizens healthier, our children, our families, our seniors.
Seniors also benefit by the new money that will go to communities and cities, through forgiving the GST and transferring an increasing portion of the gas tax to municipalities. For seniors living in their own homes, property taxes can be a huge burden. They may have wonderful old homes, but their incomes have not kept up with what is required from them in the way of taxes. By transferring $600 million this year, and that goes on every year, increasing to $2 billion by the year 2010 to our cities, that will relieve the demands they have to put on property taxpayers to pay for things like roads, clean water, sewers, parks and recreation programs. That directly benefits seniors who often have the hardest time paying higher property taxes.
However, seniors care about more than their own interests. They have also worked very hard and sacrificed a lot to educate their sons and daughters. They want to be sure that their sons and daughters can use their education in their jobs and careers and that their grandchildren or great-grandchildren will be well looked after. That is why the national child care program is also important for seniors. It allows their children to live the lives that they have educated and raised them for and to live the most productive lives they can.
I want to also mention that seniors want the best possible lives for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In the budget money has been dedicated toward cleaner water, cleaner land and cleaner air. A planet that we can survive on is also important for seniors. They know and I know that long after we are gone, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be living with the decisions we make today on how to protect the environment of our world. That is one element of the budget that I am extremely proud of as well.
On behalf of the many seniors who I represent, while there is not everything in the budget I would like to see, there is a great deal there that will make life better for seniors in Canada.