Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Newton—North Delta.
I want to bring to the attention of the House that this is only the first of many changes that need to be made to our pension system if the Conservatives are to have their way. This is only the beginning of what will be an ideologically-driven reduction in the amount of benefit that individuals would expect to receive from their government after working a lifetime in Canada and expecting a reasonable ability to retire.
I am one of those baby boomers who is the problem. We were constantly being told that, as a result of the improvements Canada was making to our standards of living, as a result of automation and as the result of all kinds of advances in medicine and in science, not only would we have an easier life, with fewer working hours in each week, but we would all be able to retire earlier and that we should not have to worry about retiring later.
The Conservatives are ensuring that those advances are being stopped and, in fact, they are moving backward. They want to take the country backward and that is so wrong.
I am the opposition deputy critic for persons with disabilities and the Conservatives have not yet said what they intend to do to the Canada pension as it pertains to persons with disabilities.
Two individuals from my riding, who are both on a Canada pension disability pension, have written to me. They are younger than the age at which this change to the OAS will not affect people. Therefore, they will be affected by the change in OAS. They have already realized that they will have an enormous gap in their income because their Canada disability pension ends at age 65. They are both permanently disabled, cannot work and cannot do anything to change their situation. Their income is such that they do not have enough money to save more for their retirement. The Conservatives have said over and over again that they are giving people plenty of notice so they can save more for their retirement and bridge the gap between 65 and 67. However, those two individuals and many more across Canada are not able to do that. Physically and financially, they cannot manage between 65 and 67.
What is the answer? There is no answer from the government. Its answer is to give the provinces some money. Those individuals would be forced to apply for welfare when they turn 65. We are telling our disabled people in this country that they now must accept a lower standard of living. That is in violation of our signature on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and that is unacceptable to this side of the House.
That is one of many side effects of the government's single-minded, ideologically-driven agenda of reducing what the government gives back to its citizens. This is not about some crisis in the aging of our population. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that it is sustainable in the long run.
All of the figures show that this baby boom generation is a temporary blip but the government is proposing to make a permanent change to Canada's retirement system. We cannot and we should not move backward and take the country backward with each step of the current government.
The member opposite suggested that a person's life expectancy is growing and he used the number 82. Eighty-two is really only the number for females. It is considerably less for males. However, let us say that life expectancy is growing. Part of the reason life expectancy is growing is that we are investing money in our medical system. The current government has decided to stop increasing the amount of money we invest in our medical system, limiting it instead to increases relative to inflation.
That will have the impact of shortening our lives, in particular, those people who are in the 20% lowest category of income who already have a lifetime that is shorter by 20% than the rest of Canadians. We are telling those people that it is too bad, so sad, that they are going to have to work two years longer. They cannot as they are physically unable to.
The government has failed once again to warn Canadians that this is but the first salvo in what will be a domino effect of moving to age 67 for the old age security system. That system is the underpinning of every other retirement system in the country, save and except for those individuals who make way too much money to need the OAS. Those individuals who are making more than $120,000 a year in their pension do not need our protection. However, the government has created a domino that will affect every individual who makes less than $120,000 a year. They will need something to make up the difference between 65 and 67 or they will have to wait until 67 to retire.
The government has not said yet, but I am sure it will, that it intends to change the Canada pension plan to make it dovetail with the OAS. Has anybody here had any on that debate? Have we had any discussion on the Canada pension moving to age 67?
It necessarily must follow. We cannot leave a gap and say that one set of pension plans has an age of 65, but the underpinning of all of them has an age of 67. It does not work. Financially it does not work, societally it does not work and it does not work in determining what one's retirement will be. One cannot now plan for retirement at age 65 when a big chunk of the money is missing between 65 and 67. Therefore, not only would the Canada pension plan have to change, and the government has not said anything about how it would do that, but all employer pension plans would have to change.
Employer pension plans are based on what a person can reasonably expect to live on when they turn the age of retirement. The age of retirement in every employer pension plan is 65. That will have to change to 67. The normal age of retirement that is stated in almost every employer pension plan in the country, and I have dealt with lots of them, is 65. However, it could not continue to be 65 if the other income support that it depended upon disappeared. Therefore, it would have to become 67 years of age.
This is another creeping piece of the puzzle of how the government would force all young people to wait to retire at 67 and work an extra two years. They would have a 45-year work life instead of 43. We are going backward and we do not want to do that.
Employer long-term disability plans all end at 65 or death, whichever comes first. Now those employer disability plans would have a gap between the age of 65 and 67. What are those individuals supposed to do? Will the employers magnanimously start paying more money into those disability plans in order to continue to pay people until 67? I highly doubt it. I think there would be blood on the street before that happened.
Will the employer life insurance plans, which all end at 65, suddenly become amended and end at 67 so the life insurance plans would continue? Will provincial welfare plans, which now end at 65, be suddenly amended to end at 67?
The government has said that it would help the provinces. However, we have a government that is saying that it cannot afford to keep this system up, but it has lots of money to hand the provinces so they can keep the system up. There is a bit of hypocrisy going on there.
Finally, the provincial disability plans have exactly the same problem as the Canada pension plan and disability plan in that the provincial disability plans end at age 65. Therefore, if someone says that we can change OAS without changing the Canada pension plan, employer plans and all the rest, they are either lying or dreaming in Technicolor.