Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her very cogent question and I think the cogent word is “force”.
As we know, many seniors at the age of 65 choose to continue working. They would like to contribute to the economy, to put the bread and butter for their table, and support their grandkids going through university. However, they should have the choice of how much longer they are going to work or how many days of the week they have to work.
The member is correct that we are already finding, certainly in the jurisdiction I come from, rapidly rising electricity rates even though deregulated electricity was supposed to offer cheap rates. The eco-energy retrofit program has been killed. That program would have saved seniors a lot of money and there was a lot of interest among the seniors with whom I spoke. The member is quite correct that we should not be forcing our seniors to work past the time when they are able to or choose to work.