Mr. Speaker, one of the sad legacies of the government threatens to be the decision to raise the qualifying age for retirement benefits from 65 to 67 years.
The old age pension is extremely important to the well-being of seniors across the country. This pension and the associated guaranteed income supplement for those who need it form the bedrock of retirement security for Canadians. Indeed, there are large numbers of Canadians for whom this is the only source of income.
To take this benefit from people who have worked all their lives, often struggling for many years against hardship and poverty, is cruel and frankly immoral.
However, it seems part of a larger agenda of the government is making the lives of the next generation worse instead of better than the present one: lower incomes with two-tier wages, more student debt, less job security, less income security, less workplace protection, less pension protection, and less retirement security.
Fortunately, an NDP government would reverse this decision and this agenda.