Mr. Speaker, this issue is very important for Newfoundland and Labrador and also for Quebec.
The member brings up a good point.The most vulnerable would be women in that age group.
I just dealt with a situation last week involving a woman who had to take care of her ailing parents. The only income support she had was through government means at a very low level.
Some people save RRSPs and when they withdraw from their RRSPs, their old age security and GIS are decreased. It seems like we have put ourselves in a situation where people in one lot improve themselves but people in the other lot do not.
The reason why I bring this up is because it seems that women are most vulnerable in this situation. They are predominantly the caregivers, at least for parents in the riding I am from. As a result of that, the most vulnerable get looked over very quickly. They are not as loud as others. In many cases, they are left on the hook to look after their parents in a very vulnerable situation.
The parents could have incredibly large drug expenses or incredibly large housing expenses. There is no housing available in communities that are isolated. They stay in the home that they have lived in for 50 years. It is not easy to heat these large homes. When the parents do not have the ability to heat these buildings, the responsibility falls on the children and the children in this particular situation cannot go to government agencies because they just do not qualify. The most important thing we should do goes back to the very motion we are debating today, and that is provide a level of income support to the people who actually own the home and the most vulnerable, those seniors.