Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to this important motion. I will be splitting my time with the member for Timmins—James Bay.
I want to acknowledge in particular the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard for her very good work in bringing this motion forward. I also want to mention two other colleagues, the member for London—Fanshawe, the NDP seniors critic, and the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, the NDP critic for pensions. New Democrats have been raising the issues around pensions and seniors for the many years I have been in the House and we will continue to do so.
For the interest of people who may be just tuning in, I want to read the motion that we are debating. It states:
That this House reject calls by the Prime Minister to balance the Conservative deficit on the backs of Canada's seniors by means such as raising the age of eligibility for Old Age Security and call on the government to make the reduction and eventual elimination of seniors' poverty a cornerstone of the next budget.
I am going to focus on a couple of aspects of this motion. As the NDP critic for poverty in the House, I have a number of things I want to include in my speech today.
One of the things we have heard from the members opposite is that the country simply cannot afford to look after seniors as they age. The Canadian Labour Congress has done some analysis of the projected figures, which I quote:
As a share of GDP, the program cost is forecast to increase from 2.36% in 2011, to a peak of 3.14% in 2030, after which year the cost will fall. In other words, the cost of the program as a share of national income will increase by 33% from 2011 to 2030, even though the number of seniors will increase by 90%.
Many other analyses have been done on the affordability of the program as it currently exists, and the numbers simply fly in the face of the Conservatives telling us that we cannot afford to look after seniors.
Why should we be concerned? I mentioned at the outset that I wanted to talk about poverty. There is a direct link between poverty and the state of health of Canadians, whether they are seniors, young people or middle-aged people, and there is a tremendous amount of work being done on the social determinants of health. Although I do not have time to go into all of the determinants, I want to quote from an article on this:
The primary factors that shape the health of Canadians are not medical treatments or lifestyle choices but rather the living conditions they experience. These conditions have come to be known as the social determinants of health....
Canadians are largely unaware that our health is shaped by how income and wealth is distributed, whether or not we are employed and if so, the working conditions we experience. Our health is also determined by the health and social services we receive, and our ability to obtain quality education, food and housing, among other factors.
And contrary to the assumption that Canadians have personal control over these factors, in most cases these living conditions are--for better or worse--imposed upon us by the quality of the communities, housing situations, work settings, health and social service agencies, and educational institutions with which we interact.
This article talks about 14 different social determinants of health, and they include the following, which are a direct link to seniors as well: income and income distribution; unemployment and job security; early childhood development, which I will discuss later; food insecurity; housing and the social safety network.
Therefore, when we talk about the income that seniors receive, we are also talking about their health and well-being. That is why it is really important that we not delay income for seniors by two years, as the trial balloon that was floated by the Prime Minister would.
When it comes to income, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has also prepared a brief. It talks about the adequacy of benefits as they currently exist without any tinkering by the Conservatives. It indicates:
—the maximum annual income a single individual could receive from OAS and GIS combined in the July-September 2009 quarter is about $14,000. However, Statistics Canada’s 2008 after-tax low-income cut-off for a single individual in a major urban area with a population of 500,000 or over was $18,373. Even for smaller urban areas in 2008, the after-tax LICO [low-income cut-off] was above $14,000—
Just based on those figures alone, we can see that seniors who are just getting old age security and GIS are already living below the low-income cutoff.
If they start pushing those numbers up, what are those seniors between the ages of 65 and 67 going to do? These are seniors who qualify and many of them are at the low end.
If the Conservatives are serious about supporting seniors and future generations, what is needed is a real plan to address poverty reduction. I call on the government to support the NDP Bill C-233, the poverty elimination act, which would directly take on some of these issues.
The Canadian Labour Congress has done an analysis on poverty and ill health. In its paper, “Implications of Raising the Age of Eligibility for Old Age Security”, it states:
Raising the age of eligibility for OAS/GIS from 65 to 67 would likely result in a very significant increase in poverty for persons aged 65 to 67, unless they were able to find an alternative source of income. That is possible for some, but many older workers in their 60s are in ill health or are engaged in providing care for others.
I know many members in their sixties have parents who are in their eighties. We often talk about the sandwich generation, people who are caring for children or perhaps grandchildren. Many seniors are caring for their grandchildren. They could also be caring for their elderly and aging parents who often are in ill health by the time they are in their nineties.
It continues:
Raising the age of eligibility for OAS/GIS would mean that non-working, low income seniors on provincial social assistance and disability programs would have to wait to transition to OAS/GIS, raising social assistance costs for provincial governments. Costs of providing drugs and essential services to low income seniors unable to pay on their own would also increase.
We have seen the government's track record of downloading to the provincial governments. This is another way it would download to the provincial governments that are already struggling to meet some of their demands, whether it has to do with infrastructure, housing or drug costs.
The paper goes on to say that not everyone can work longer. Part of the argument we hear is that we have a labour shortage and we need to push the retirement age up to 67 so we can address that labour shortage. If the government is talking about addressing the labour shortage, it should invest in training and apprenticeships. It should look at immigration if it wants to deal with some of those labour shortages. The labour shortages are no surprise. We have known for 15 or 20 years that we were going to have critical skill shortages in some of the apprenticed trades. Where is the government's plan to address that? It is absent, missing in action. We are hearing that from all kinds of people. Whether it is pulp mills, other parts of the forestry sector or mining companies, there were all kinds of predictions of skill shortages.
Why are we not training, for example, first nations, Métis and Inuit to address some of those skill shortages? The money simply is not there.
The paper further states:
It is argued that eligibility for OAS/GIS discourages older Canadians from remaining in the workforce, and that we need to keep them working to avoid labour shortages.
In point of fact, the reality is that Canadians are already staying in the workforce much longer than was the case even a decade ago.... [O]ne in four (24%) persons, aged 65 to 70, is already still working, up from 11% in 2000. That rate has been trending sharply upward for a number of reasons. Some are working longer because they want to, and they find work interesting. This is most often the case for higher income workers. Others are working longer due to inadequate retirement savings. The trend to working well past age 65 will likely continue.
There is sufficient information to counter the government's argument that we cannot maintain the current old age security and GIS system to ensure that seniors can retire with dignity, and with an income that is already inadequate, we do not want to make it worse for them.
I would encourage all members to support this very important motion that was brought forward by the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard and to actually support seniors in their retirement.