Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the NDP caucus, I welcome the opportunity to enter the debate on Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act. Our caucus will support the bill at second reading so that it can go to committee where we can move significant amendments.
Earlier this afternoon I listened carefully to the minister's comments. Judging by the rhetoric, he would have Canadians believe that through this single piece of legislation, he has once and for all ensured that seniors no longer need to worry about their economic security in retirement. No one more than I do wishes that were true.
Seniors across our country are profoundly and legitimately worried about their retirement incomes. They are worried about the solvency of their private pensions. They fret about the adequacy of both CPP and public income supports. They are keenly aware that the rate of inflation is higher for seniors than it is for other Canadians.
What is the government's response to these very legitimate fears? It introduces a bill that is essentially just housekeeping in nature. It is administrative. It streamlines some services and application processes but it does nothing to redress the inadequate benefit levels of seniors' incomes.
Politicians on all sides of the House pay lip service to the fact that seniors built our country and that we owe it to them to ensure that they can retire with the dignity and respect they deserve, but in reality, through successive Liberal and Conservative governments, seniors are falling farther and farther behind. In my hometown of Hamilton, one-quarter of all seniors are living in poverty and senior women over the age of 75 have a poverty rate of 36%. Nationally, over one-quarter of a million seniors are living under the low income cut-off, or as we call it, living below the poverty line. In 2004 about one-third of seniors, most of whom were single women, had little other income and were dependent on OAS and GIS for an average annual income of just $12,400.
Living in poverty is hardly a retirement lived with dignity and respect. That is compounded by the fact that increases in the cost of living hits seniors disproportionately harder than any other segment of the population.
When Statistics Canada determines the annual cost of living upon which adjustments are based, its basket of goods includes electronics like iPods, plasma TVs and computers, all goods which are coming down in price and reducing the cost of living figures. Frankly, those are also the goods which seniors are not buying. The items seniors are spending money on are essentials like heat, hydro, food and shelter, the increasing costs of which are all outpacing their incomes. What is the government doing to address that issue? Absolutely nothing, not in this bill and not in any other piece of legislation that the Conservatives have introduced in the House to date.
In fact, I would like to remind members of the government of an issue that I raised with them in question period before the House rose in December. Statistics Canada has miscalculated the consumer price index since 2001. In response to my question, the then minister of human resources and social development acknowledged that this error meant seniors had been shortchanged for years in the increase to their CPP, OAS and GIS entitlements.
The government is continuing to make seniors pay for its mistake. Admittedly, that mistake originally happened during the Liberals' 13 years in government, but expecting the Liberals to act responsibly with taxpayers' money is, as Justice Gomery reminded us, like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
However, the Conservatives started with a blank slate and they have now tabled Bill C-36, purportedly to deal precisely with CPP, OAS and GIS. Yet nowhere in the bill nor anywhere in the minister's comments does one find any reference to righting this wrong for retirees.
I have started a national petition campaign on this issue. I would encourage the millions of Canadians who I know are watching this afternoon to go to my website, download a copy of that petition and send it back to me, or they could write to me postage free here at the House of Commons and I will personally send them a copy to circulate among their friends. Surely in what may well be an election year the government will not be able to ignore the voices of millions of Canadian voters, but judging by Bill C-36, the government will need to be pushed to do the right thing.
Last June I had the privilege of introducing on behalf of our caucus a motion in the House of Commons to create a seniors charter of rights. One of the enumerated rights in the charter is the right of all seniors to income security. To my surprise, the Conservative government supported my motion and the motion was passed by a vote of 231 to 52. However, the Conservatives have neither introduced nor supported a single legislative initiative in the seven months since the motion was passed to enact any of the rights the seniors charter guarantees.
We need the government to do more than talk the talk. It is time that it walked the walk.
To date, the Conservatives have been disinclined to help seniors living in poverty. In the last federal budget, the one and only item that came even close to addressing the income of seniors was an increase to $2,000 in the pension tax credit. Who benefits from that tax credit? Not a single senior whose only income is CPP, OAS and GIS. The tax credit only applies to private pensions. The seniors who need the money the most get no help from their government at all, not a single red cent for the neediest in our communities.
Similarly, the Conservatives increased the income tax rate in the lowest bracket from 15% to 15.5%, which means that many seniors are now getting $10 less on their monthly CPP cheques. They would have to spend $1,000 a month to recover that money from the much talked about 1% cut to the GST.
The federal government reported a surplus of $13 billion in its last federal budget and yet it did not spend a dime on alleviating poverty for seniors. I ask that I be forgiven for not doing cartwheels over the administrative tinkering that is before us in Bill C-36. it simply represents a missed opportunity.
Is there anything of value in the bill at all? Yes, there is. For example, I welcome the fact that the government will finally waive the requirement for a renewal application for the GIS and allowance benefits after an initial application has been made. That change, of course, was long overdue. What about the 130,000 seniors who are eligible for the GIS but are not receiving it? Why not just eliminate the application process altogether so that every eligible senior will be getting what is rightfully theirs?
I have proudly been working with the seniors and poverty working group in Hamilton which made it its mission last year to do the necessary outreach to ensure that seniors became aware of their public income entitlements and provided assistance to access them. It has been an absolute privilege to work with this dedicated group of community activists but it has also been an eye-opening experience to observe how community leaders who are already overworked have been forced to step up to the plate because the government has dropped the ball.
Just as seniors are not getting timely access to the GIS, so are many of them failing to apply for all of the benefits to which they are entitled under other income supports. CPP and OAS are the other two major programs that millions of aging Canadians rely on for income security in retirement. The same barriers exist for these programs as for the GIS.
One cannot simply refer seniors to a website and assume they can navigate their way through the information highway. In-depth counselling is often a prerequisite to seniors learning about all of their entitlements and ensuring that they fill out their applications properly and in a timely manner. That job used to be performed by government specialists who worked for Services Canada. These were people like Irene Smith in Hamilton who contacted me and my colleague, the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, last November to inform us that she and her small cadre of colleagues were no longer permitted to give specialized attention to individuals seeking in-depth pension counselling. Instead, her job description was rewritten to make her a generalist who deals with everything from boat licences to EI. This will lead to hundreds and potentially thousands of elderly Hamiltonians being unable to access all of the financial benefits to which they are entitled in a timely fashion.
Often, restrictive clauses on retroactivity make it impossible to recover from early filing errors. These clauses too need to be changed but Bill C-36 offers absolutely no redress. Depriving seniors of what is rightfully theirs is hardly retirement lived with dignity and respect.
As we debate Bill C-36 here today, we need to ask ourselves who will ensure that current and future retirees will be made aware of their entitlements. Who will help them access what is rightfully theirs? Why is Bill C-36 silent on these crucial elements of implementation?
It is good to note that the bill would facilitate the application process for seniors who apply for income tested benefits and who have suffered a loss of income due to termination or reduction of employment or pension income by requiring that seniors report estimated pension and employment income only. However, who will be there to explain to them what that means? Who will explain to seniors when it might be advantageous for them to withdraw an OAS application where the pension has not yet been paid? I know that for some this will prove to be a positive change in the legislative framework but only if they are aware of how to access that permissive clause.
Who will explain the expanded restrictions on income tested benefits for immigrants subject to sponsorship agreements or does the minister hope that nobody will notice that part of the act?
Seniors whose sole income support is OAS and GIS are hardly in a position to hire lawyers and accountants to figure it out for them. That is why the NDP's seniors charter included the creation of a seniors advocate, someone who would be dedicated to conducting public education and awareness initiatives on the rights of seniors. Without that, a right that cannot be accessed is, frankly, no right at all. However, we can bet that the government has already put plans in place to enforce the punitive provisions of Bill C-36.
The bill strengthens the ability of the ministry to recover overpayments and interest where it has accrued, both with respect to OAS and CPP. We can bet our bottom dollar that those provisions have a staffing plan in place and yet why is there not even a mention of reimbursing pensioners with interest when an error of underpayment is made by the government? Seniors deserve better. Seniors have worked hard all their lives and have played by the rules but now that they need the system that their tax dollars helped to build, they are confronted by barriers to access.
If the government wants to be taken seriously with respect to its treatment of seniors, it needs to do more than talk the talk. It needs to walk the walk. It needs to live up to the commitment it made by voting for the seniors charter. It needs to ensure that seniors have timely access to all federal government services and programs. It also needs to ensure that seniors can rely on protected pensions and indexed public income supports that provide a reasonable state of economic welfare. Only then will seniors finally be able to retire with the dignity and respect they deserve.