Mr. Speaker, I hosted a round table in my riding specifically for widows because they find themselves in a particular situation. They are bereft over the loss of a spouse, that special person they shared their entire life with, and are left to their own devices to manoeuvre through government bureaucracy to figure out every benefit that they are supposed to get as well as figuring out how to close their old files.
Many constituents have come to my office to tell me that a mistake has been made, or that the government is paying a benefit that it should not be paying. In one particular case the government believed someone was deceased. I told the gentleman that it was obvious that he was still alive. Obviously the Canada Revenue Agency had made a mistake in his case.
Seniors find themselves in a situation where they have no champion within the government. Nobody is specifically looking at how seniors interact with the government, for example, how are they doing in terms of the cost of living.
We are talking about seniors in their retirement years, the golden years, as they are called. The majority of them live on a fixed income. Things like the carbon tax or an increase in the rate of inflation eat away at their savings. Seniors bear the brunt of government decisions, such as the decision on a carbon tax, a punishing new tax that will take away the most from those on fixed incomes.