Mr. Speaker, I will tell the member what is different. In this case, we had seniors who were working to top up their guaranteed income supplement benefit, but they lost their job when the pandemic started. They were told to apply for help and that they would get some supplementary income to replace what they had lost. When they said it was a little more than they usually make, the government said not to worry and to just apply. It said, “We have your back; there's not going to be any penalty.”
Some seniors ended up fixing their car, some fixed their teeth and some paid bills that were in arrears. Then the time came to assess them for the guaranteed income supplement for next year, and without the government having told them, their pandemic benefit counted against them in the calculation of their GIS. This represents not only their GIS, but a bunch of other programs for which GIS enrolment is a precondition and that support them. The government just started clawing it back. The government knew for months that this was coming, but it did not care and did not do anything about it.
Now people are being evicted and some are dying. That is a huge difference. This has to do with the government and how it has managed its own internal bureaucracy, and it is costing lives. That has not happened before.