Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise today in support of my colleague from Brampton West, and in support of thousands of wonderful seniors in our country.
If we would all work with the same passion and same commitment as the hon. member for Brampton West, we would never have to worry about our seniors being left behind. Her dedication to society's most vulnerable is inspiring and should serve as a model to all of us in the House, contrary to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, who does not understand the basic principle of this bill. She kept on talking about the pensions. In fact, it is an old age security benefit.
Bill C-362, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act, is a long overdue change to our social vision of our elderly. The present requirement is that seniors from certain countries live here for 10 years before they are eligible for even partial payments, which will help to keep them out of poverty.
Ten years is a long time. We require only three years for someone to become a full citizen of the country. Why then do we make some seniors suffer through another seven more years of hardship while they wait to be eligible for old age security? To make matters even worse, this long time does not even apply fairly for all Canadian seniors.
This does not fit with our fundamental Canadian values and belief in equality for all our citizens. It makes things harder for seniors who come from poorer countries, who do not have social security and who get no protection from poverty here as well. They have come to our country to get better lives and help build a better and stronger Canada.
It is sad that these seniors, the ones who are the most vulnerable to poverty, are the ones who suffer the most from the 10 year wait. This inequality between the seniors in our country is unjust and we must work together to level the playing field and protect not just some of our seniors from poverty, but all seniors.
I cannot help but feel frustrated when members from the Conservative Party say that only those who have been here 10 years deserve security, that only those who have been here 10 years have done anything worthwhile for our country. This is a gross misunderstanding of the valuable role our parents and grandparents play in today's Canadian society.
Earlier the member for Surrey North mentioned many reasons for both parents and grandparents to be productive. These seniors are productive members of our great society, and I cannot find a better example than my own parents. They have come to this country, are staying in my home and are helping my wife and I raise three beautiful children.
My family is not alone in this. When the government decided real child care was not a priority, many families had to scramble and rely upon extended relatives as caregivers. However, these caregivers, our grandfathers and grandmothers, have even less support than child care workers.
The Conservative government wants it both ways. It wants to take away real choice for our families on child care and then it wants families to bear the weight for old age security. The Prime Minister's agenda is clear: limit the options for the young and the old.
It is not enough to trash the future; they are also dishonouring our past.
Our seniors cannot be productive if they have to worry about how they will eat each day. There are thousands of seniors in our communities that the old age security would take out of poverty. It would allow them to concentrate on how to strengthen our families and communities.
I have had several meetings with seniors in my riding of Newton—North Delta, in Surrey and the Delta area, groups like the Kennedy House Seniors' Centre. They have told me first-hand about how hard it is for our elderly citizens to survive from day to day. This has also come up at monthly meetings and lunches that I have hosted for some of the seniors in my riding.
My community is telling me that we need to do more to help keep our parents and grandparents out of poverty. It is not right that the Conservative government finishes each year with huge surpluses and does nothing to help those seniors who suffer and need the most.
It is not the first time the Conservative government has failed our seniors. It began when the Conservative Prime Minister flip-flopped on income trusts and ruined the retirement savings of thousands of seniors across the country. It got worse when the Conservative government raised taxes for the lowest income bracket in its first budget. Despite a $13 billion surplus, the Conservative Prime Minister decided to pay for the GST cut and military spending by targeting the most vulnerable elderly in our society.
Now the minority Conservative government is failing us again by refusing to help the hundreds of thousands of seniors, many of whom have lived in the country for years, to get the old age security benefits they deserve.
This is not acceptable in a progressive society like Canada. I plead with the members opposite to see reason and join with my colleague from Brampton West in taking real steps to protect our seniors from the hardship of poverty. Members should not let their credibility be further ruined by once again choosing partisanship over principles.
It was the Liberal Party that established the old age security in 1952, the Canada pension plan in 1966 and the guaranteed income supplement in 1967. We brought the Canada pension plan back on a strong financial footing in 1998 for the next 50 years. In 2005 we pumped $2.7 billion into the guaranteed income supplement to help our low income elderly.
We have put our money where our mouth is and have stood up for Canada's most vulnerable.
If three years is enough time to contribute enough to our country to earn citizenship, then three years should be enough to earn the right not to fear living out our golden years in poverty. We cannot continue with a system that has some seniors receiving financial security to stay out of poverty within a year of entering our country and the others having to wait 10 years, based on the country from where they came.
I urge all members of the House of Commons to support the bill. The time has come to put aside our partisanship and work together on this issue so Canadian seniors will not ever live in poverty.