Mr. Speaker, at the outset I want to thank to the member for Chambly—Borduas for bringing the motion forward, and I know that he and my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst have worked in this House for quite some years now to try to better the situation for working people across this country.
Today he brings to the House a very pertinent and relevant issue, which is the way we deal with our older workers and support them in their efforts, and the way we make sure that if they have to go back to work in order to support themselves, or perhaps to enhance a meagre pension, we look after their needs and make sure they are healthy, and, if they are out of work, that they get access to the supports and training or retraining they need to continue to contribute in the excellent way they have over their lifetimes.
I first want to say that I find it shocking and alarming that we are discussing the issues in such a way here today. The way that our economy has evolved, we are now very dependent on people who should be enjoying retirement. They are having to go back to work.
First is the fact that the economy needs them in the way it does. For the most part, they end up in low paying, dead-end jobs. Certainly that has been my experience. The fact is that we have not done anything as a society and as a government over the last number of years, when the economy has been well, to enhance the situation for our retired workers in this country.
They are the people who actually built the plants and communities that we all work in and live in now. They are the people who gave of their blood, sweat and tears, who fought in wars and came back, rolled up their sleeves and got down to work. They put those of us who are here today through school so that we could participate. They now find themselves in a situation where their pensions are not enough, neither the Canada pension nor the workplace pension that, if they were lucky enough to have one, is now beginning to pay out. It is not enough. It does not keep them in the dignified life that they should expect in a country that is as well off as Canada.
We have not found a way to make sure that absolutely everybody who works in this country has a pension above and beyond the Canada pension, a pension that will be there for them when they retire. Even with the pensions that do exist, we have not done that which needs to be done, and that is the indexing of pensions, as I have heard from so many seniors who say this needs to be done. Indexing needs to be done so that older people do not have to go back to work and be put through the grinder in the way that we have heard described here today. It needs to be done so they do not have to go on bended knee to government to look for a little help, for a little extra in order to improve their skills or whatever so they can make a few more dollars to buy a bit more food and perhaps pay the rent.
It is shameful that we have not found a way in this country to make sure that every worker has a pension that is indexed. It is probably something that we need to be looking at in the House in the future.
Also shameful are the kinds of cuts made by the previous Liberal government and which the present government partakes in as it tries to manage its financial affairs at a time when we have burgeoning surpluses in this country. Those cuts will have impacts on older workers in our country. As well, the government has cut literacy programs.
Particularly in northern Ontario in the resource based sector, we have workers who have worked for many years. They got up in the morning at five o'clock, got into the plant, made the paper or the steel or the boards that we all use to build our homes and our highways, and at the end of their career, at the age of 55 or 60, they end up having to take another job.
With the way the economy is evolving, a lot of those jobs now require a level of literacy that these workers were never able to pay attention to while working 24-7, some of them, to feed their kids and keep body and soul together. They now have found out that under the Conservative government those adult literacy programs are going to be cut.
These people find themselves living in homes that are sometimes a bit too big, yet they do not want to leave them because the alternative is unacceptable. They cannot afford the rent. They cannot afford the taxes. They cannot afford to pay for the electricity and their heat in those homes. So they have to go out and get another job.
Since the early 1990s, the government has not been able to find the wherewithal to come forward with an affordable housing strategy so that those seniors, our mothers and fathers, can move into accommodation that is more appropriate to their station in life at this time. We need housing that is more affordable for them so that they then perhaps will not have to go out and get another job at the age of 60 or 70 and have to go through the rigmarole or the wringer of--