Mr. Speaker, my colleague's concern for pensioners tweaked my interest. I think he will agree with me that one of the root causes for the proliferation of these payday loans is that there have been so many bank closures, at least especially in the inner city in the riding I represent. As the banks closed, that void was filled with these fringe banking outfits that actually charge to cash cheques. I did not know this until recently, but it is against the law to charge to cash a government cheque. Some of these places charge 3%, 4% or 5% to cash even government pension cheques.
As for my question, I wonder if my colleague is aware that the plight of pensioners who rely solely on OAS-GIS has actually gotten worse. In the last federal budget, the government decreased the basic personal exemption from $9,039 to $8,639, I believe, so it was decreased by $400. That means $400 more that a senior is paying taxes on. Even at the lowest rate of taxation, which I believe is 15.5%, seniors are now paying taxes on $400 more than they ever used to before.
I did some quick math, and my colleague is probably better at math than I am, but that is $60 or $61 a year, which only looks like $5 a month, except that because this came into effect on July 1, the government doubled it for the remaining six months to spread it out over the whole year, so it is a cut in pay of $10 a month. When a lot of seniors voted for the Tories to form the government, I do not think they knew they would get their pay cut by ten bucks a month for that six month period and five bucks a month thereafter. Was my colleague aware of that? Does he run into that issue in his own riding?