Mr. Speaker, according to Statistics Canada, 130,000 low income seniors are now eligible for but not receiving GIS benefits, so much more than that, and 55,000 are missing out on CPP retirement benefits. This is quite a significant number.
As far as I know, the seniors are not being advised in any way on this aspect of what is their entitlement. After seniors have worked their whole lives, the government is turning a blind eye to this benefit that Canadian seniors have a right to. Right now in Victoria there are about 55,000 seniors and 5,600 of them are living in poverty. They are living month to month, in some cases with great difficulty where rents are very high in one of the most expensive cities in Canada, yet about 200 of them are not advised in any way by the government about the best way to benefit from what would essentially lift them, at least partially, out of the extreme poverty that some of them face.