Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. This bill is a little bit of flag waving to try to placate seniors and for the government to say that it did something in the House of Commons to address their concerns.
Substantively the bill does very little. The seniors in the member's riding of Timmins—James Bay are like the seniors of Hamilton Mountain and the seniors in Victoria that my other colleague spoke about. They do not need more rhetoric. What they need from the government is action.
We have the capacity to deal with those things in the House. I tabled a motion asking that the House of Commons review the income needs of seniors on a regular basis, that we establish adequate benefit levels and that we say to seniors that it is unacceptable that they are living in poverty after all the contributions they have made to build this amazing country. If we are not going to do that, at a minimum we should take seriously Bill C-336 which I introduced so that seniors can access their CPP entitlements retroactively.
It is completely insane that we rely on funeral homes to let people know about their survivor benefits when a loved one passes away. Why can the government not engage in active outreach? It used to do that. There used to be people in Services Canada who counselled people with respect to their pension entitlements. Those people are now dealing with everything from boat licences to employment insurance. That is not good enough.
Our seniors deserve the kind of hands on specialized attention that gives them access to their benefits in a timely fashion. If that is not provided, then at a minimum seniors should be given full retroactivity for their benefits so that no matter when they find out about their entitlements they can get the money that is legally and legitimately theirs. That is the minimum of what we need to do to lift seniors out of poverty.
When the government supported the seniors' charter we all saw that as beacon of hope. We thought that perhaps just for once this House would move forward and take the right steps on behalf of seniors. Clearly that has not happened yet. On the eve of an election I am not optimistic that it is going to happen, but boy, I know that the government is going to be out there waving the flag and saying, “Trust us. We will do it next time”.
I do not think seniors are so trusting any more. They cannot be fooled. They deserve action now.