Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of seniors in my riding of Parkdale--High Park and I hear from them quite often about the issues they are facing: concerns about high drug costs, housing costs, people who want to stay in their homes and the lack of home care.
They have a lot of issues and they are concerned about their incomes. They worry all the time whether they will be able to stretch their income to meet their needs. Costs are going up way faster than their income.
When I tell seniors that, due to a miscalculation by the present government and previous governments, seniors are owed a billion dollars that they should rightfully have in their pension income, they are absolutely shocked. They know that if the shoe were on the other foot and they somehow miscalculated their taxes and owed the federal government $50 or $100, they would be afraid that the government would come down on them like a tonne of bricks. To be sure, the government would ensure that money was collected.
Seniors are baffled, as I am, and I am also quite angry that the government would allow that money to be denied to the seniors of our country. A billion dollars is a huge amount of money. Surely, out of the $250 billion that the country has forgone in taxes over the last 20 years, we would think that it could find 1/250th for the seniors of our country.