Marcel Gagnon

[Guaranteed Income Supplement, December 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, why limit the retroactivity to 11 months, as in the law? Why not full retroactivity? The minister has no excuse for refusing to pay up.

So, I ask her once again when she intends to pay and pay back the money she owes seniors.

[Guaranteed Income Supplement, December 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the principle of retroactivity is not new.

It exists, for example, in connection with income tax, and the government is not shy about using it to collect money from taxpayers.

Does the Minister of Human Resources intend to apply the principle of full retroactivity and give seniors all the money she owes them?

[Committees of the House, December 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the forms are extremely difficult to find. I explained earlier how to get them.

This is an amendment that we suggested in the report. The forms should be more readily available. Why not have forms in members' riding offices, for example? When people come in to get information, we could hand out forms to them so they can apply.

When the government hands out forms, it does not necessarily have to write a cheque. It is what is on the filled out forms that counts. Why not make these forms available?

[Committees of the House, December 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will certainly accede to my colleague's request. We will not give up. We will certainly not accept that the minister not give the money back, as she said. We will not give up: the 11 month retroactivity must be eliminated. This money is owed. In this regard, we will exert enormous pressure.

I see members opposite agreeing with this. I see among others—we were told not to name members, but there are some who nodded—the member for Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, whom I will not name. But I know he agrees with what I am saying. We will do this work for the benefit of Quebecers and Canadians, because we want the minister to give in. It is 270,000 Canadians who will benefit.

[Committees of the House, December 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. It is obvious that when the government wants to find people for something else, to ask for money for example, it has ways to find them.

The member referred to the voters list. It is the same thing. In that case, they find a way to send people out and knock on doors. It is normal. I am not criticizing this procedure. But why not do the same thing to give the most vulnerable members of our society what they are entitled to? Various associations working in the communities would be happy to lend a hand. These are often seniors associations such as the Association québécoise pour la défense des droits des retraités et des préretraités, the Quebec Federation of Senior Citizens and all sorts of community based organizations which know the community well and can easily go knocking on doors. Their help could be sought. I have met with these people and received calls from them offering to help; I know that they are prepared to help. I realize this is a huge task. They would not be asking for money, but ensuring that citizens are given the money they are entitled to. This is not a handout.

Bloc Quebecois members have already promised me their support, and we are ready. On our tour, we plan to visit all the ridings. The members of the Bloc Quebecois will participate in this bee.

[Committees of the House, December 6th, 2001]

On the contrary, it is absolutely true. The member will have the opportunity to speak when his turn comes. It is disturbing to see such a situation when we hear the government brag about Canada being the best country in the world. It is incredible.

The report now before us makes recommendations. Some will ask why these people did not fill out the application forms to ask for the income supplement they were entitled to.

First of all, most of the time, that application form is impossible to find. Let us try to imagine that we are 70 years old, that we are sick, that we have some very serious problems and that we are all alone in the world. One day, we learn that we are entitled to an income supplement we are not receiving. So we ask ourselves how to get it.

We pick up the telephone, dial the 1-800 number and wait. We are then told that to get service in French we have to press one, to get service in English we have to press three, and to get all kinds of information we are told to press this or that number. One thing is sure: at that point, the person stops pressing numbers and gives up. It is extremely difficult to get the form when it should be easy to obtain it, considering the clientele that we are dealing with.

I am 65 and I spent a large part of my life filling out forms. I once was a manager responsible for a certain territory. My work required me to fill out forms and prepare balance sheets. When I see a form like this one, I get uncomfortable before even picking up a pencil to fill it out. It is an impossible task. It is extremely complicated. It is as if the form had been drafted in such a way as to discourage people from filling it out. It is difficult to find and almost impossible to fill out for people who are in that situation.

A journalist asked me if I thought this was done on purpose. I do not dare say that I believe so, but sometimes I think it is. We are going through times when cuts are being made everywhere. There are areas where it is more difficult to make cuts. When cuts are made in the health sector at the provincial level, including in Quebec, people can protest. They can complain to try to change things.

But it is easy to keep 270,000 people in the dark by not telling them what they are entitled to. These people will not come to protest on Parliament Hill. They are not able to do so. Very few people are prepared to help them. Fortunately, this week I met Ms. Bourdon, who joined me at a press conference. She looks after elderly people throughout Quebec. Her organization has branches all over the province. The people in these branches are prepared to work to track down beneficiaries, to find those who need that money and who are owed that money, so as to inform them and help them fill out the forms.

I think we will see an operation aimed at relieving seniors who are in a precarious situation, because some people will be kind enough to help them. I myself will tour Quebec to meet with these people. With my Bloc Quebecois colleagues and all those who are willing to co-operate, we will organize something aimed at informing people so that they can get their money. We will tell them that the government will not be giving them money out of charity since they are entitled to that money.

It is possible to simplify the mechanisms to get the application form. It is possible also to make it almost automatic. Some things are absurd. Why would anyone, sick and 68, 70 or 72 years old, have to apply to get the minimum? Surely it is possible to make that application automatic. It is possible also to eliminate administrative excesses.

Oddly enough, the principle of communicating vessels between departments works better when there is money to be collected. However, when there is money to be given, the government says there are no communicating vessels between departments, that one department's secrets cannot be disclosed to another.

I have no doubt that if these 270,000 people had owed money to the government, instead of the other way around, the government would have tracked them down today. It would have found a way. Of that I have no doubt.

The committee did an excellent job. It submitted recommendations to the minister. What people need to know is that, should a parent or a friend turn out to have been entitled to this money for the past five years, they will only receive retroactive payments for 11 months. This is quite awful. When they go after me for owing taxes, I am not asked to pay up for just 11 months. They want the full amount owing, even it is five years' worth.

The committee feels that this 11 month cut-off is shocking. If someone can actually get their hands on the form and find someone to help them fill it out, and then realizes that they were entitled to $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000 annually over the last two, three, four or five years, it is unbelievable that the maximum period for retroactive payments is 11 months. Why? Because someone is poor? Because they are vulnerable? This is a double standard.

When it is a case of taxpayers owing money, the government is not shy: there is no limit on retroactive payments. But when it comes to giving seniors their due, a limit is imposed. The committee recommends that this cap on retroactivity be dropped. If a person was entitled for three years, they should receive retroactive payments for the full period of entitlement.

I hope that the minister, who told me yesterday, in response to a question I asked her, that she was studying the report, will do so quickly. There is someone who is prepared to help her study it. This is a unanimous report, supported by both the Liberal Party members and members of other parties on the committee.

I ask the minister to show a bit of decency. Let us study the report, change things,and find a way to give the most vulnerable members of society the amount to which they are entitled.

[Committees of the House, December 6th, 2001]

I also saw cases in northern Ontario. Just go and see the homeless; these people have done nothing to earn such a predicament. Very often they were neglected at a time when they most needed help from society. I am sure there are a lot of homeless persons among those 270,000 individuals.

According to me, the committee has brought to light one of the worst scandals ever seen at Human Resources Development Canada. However, other people also find themselves in difficult situations. This scandal is just as bad as the looting of the employment insurance fund.

There are $42 billion in that fund. In this case, the amount is $3 billion. They have lowered the debt. They brag about how efficient they were. In order to lower the debt, they cut funds to provinces and particularly the funds meant for health care in Quebec. It is utterly unfortunate.

[Committees of the House, December 6th, 2001]

Right, they have paid for it, and they were not the ones that put the government in debt. This is a scandal that must be exposed.

There is also the homeless in Montreal, Quebec City, and other large cities in Canada. I saw pictures from Vancouver, and other places last winter—

[Committees of the House, December 6th, 2001]

Indeed, give them what they are entitled to. I am sure that we all know someone who, after the age of 65, has found themselves in a precarious situation, or is in poor health, precisely because they worked to build this country. They have become vulnerable.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that you too will find the situation scandalous. Since 1993, at least $3.2 billion has been saved on the backs of these people. When we mention billions here in the House, it sounds like two or three billion dollars is not that much, because we hear so many figures quoted so often.

Personally, what I do in order to understand, is come up with an image. I try to simplify the number; I try to give it an order of magnitude. Three billion dollars is three thousand million dollars that the government has put in its coffers and that it is using to brag about how well it has managed public finances, and even brought down the debt. However, the Minister of Finance must know that by reducing the debt by $3 billion, there are $3 billion that the poorest in our society—

[Committees of the House, December 6th, 2001]

Not everyone can read a report as complex as the one provided to apply for the guaranteed income supplement. There may be people who know neither one of the official languages. Included in this group of people I am referring to, who are being deprived of essential income, are some who know neither of the official languages.

Some of them may be sick and have a disability. I think that this is the case for most of them, the majority of the people I am talking about, the people we are trying to reach to help them, not with charity, but to help them claim what they are entitled to.