Madam Speaker, I am glad to answer the hon. member for London—Fanshawe's question. I am glad she brought up the issue of seniors who do not receive old age security benefits for which they are eligible. This provides me an opportunity to clarify things.
In order to receive OAS pension benefits, Canadian seniors need to apply. It is unfortunate that some people actually do not know this and are suffering unnecessary hardship.
It is very disconcerting to hear that seniors do not receive the benefits to which they are entitled. In such situations it is certainly not because the government is withholding that information.
We reach as many seniors as possible to give them the information about the CPP and OAS, as well as the GIS.
One way is through direct mail. Every year we send over 600,000 applications to Canadians who are not yet receiving their CPP or OAS to encourage them to apply. Recently we mailed over one million statements of CPP contributions, targeted at seniors who were not yet receiving their CPP retirement pensions, in part to remind them that this pension was available to them.
Another way is through public information campaigns and various outreach activities to seniors. Employees of Service Canada's mobile outreach services have delivered hundreds of seminars and appeared at many community events across the country to get the message out about CPP and OAS.
We also work with community organizations that serve seniors. These organizations have been very helpful in educating seniors about their pensions and what pension benefits are available to them.
We collaborate with the Canada Revenue Agency to use tax records to identify seniors who may be eligible for benefits.
The staff in our service centres are trained to ask seniors if they know about these benefits, and our citizen service specialists do more than just give out information; they actually help eligible seniors fill out their application forms. In addition, we are making special efforts to contact seniors who are harder to reach because they may be homeless, live in remote areas, do not speak English or French or have disabilities.
People who are already receiving the GIS may not always know that they have to renew their application each year. However, we have changed the renewal process so that almost all GIS recipients apply only once and have their benefits automatically renewed by filling out their income tax forms. If they do not file their income tax return or complete their application by the deadline, we send them a reminder.
The public pension system is the cornerstone of our financial support from government and of what we provide to Canadians in their later years. It is a solid, sustainable and well-designed program and we are doing our best to see that everyone who is eligible has access to it.