Irene Mathyssen

[Petitions, April 3rd, 2012]

Madam Speaker, the second petition is in regard to poverty. As we all know, poverty affects about 10% of Canadians and disproportionately affects aboriginal people, recent immigrants and seniors.

The petitioners call upon the government to enact swift passage of my colleague's private member's bill, an act to eliminate poverty in Canada.

[Petitions, April 3rd, 2012]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to present two petitions on behalf of my constituents and others across the country.

The first petition is in regard to veterans. On April 9, we will be commemorating the 95th anniversary of Vimy Ridge. While we honour first world war veterans, tragically we have forgotten about modern-day veterans, the young men and women who have answered their country's call, provided service and ensured our freedom.

The petitioners want the Government of Canada to recognize the service of post-Korean veterans and to honour its commitment to ensure they have the benefits and supports they need. In addition to that, the petitioners call upon the House of Commons to conduct a full and honest debate on the future of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the services and benefits provided to our veterans and peacekeepers. They call upon the government to respect the will of Parliament and immediately implement any motions or legislation that would allow veterans to have the same services, including veterans hospitals, as their predecessors.

[Petitions, April 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my second petition is in regard to the June 2011 motion that I brought to the House, calling on the government to take action against the rising poverty levels of Canadian seniors. The motion called on the government to take immediate steps to increase the guaranteed income supplement sufficiently to raise all seniors out of poverty. The motion passed unanimously in the House; however, no action--

[Petitions, April 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions today. The first is from the community of London, and former workers of Electro-Motive Diesel.

The petitioners want the Parliament of Canada to know that Caterpillar illegally removed production equipment from the EMD plant in London, against the collective agreement. It forced a lockout on December 30, 2011 and demanded that the workers take in excess of a 50% reduction in wages and benefits and accept a reduced and insecure pension plan. All of this despite the fact that these workers had made Electro-Motive Diesel a very profitable company. In fact, productivity had increased by 20% and profits were up by billions over last year.

The petitioners want the Parliament of Canada to investigate the conditions of sale of Electro-Motive Diesel to Caterpillar and to immediately enforce any and all appropriate penalties should there be violations under the Investment Canada Act. I might add that it is essential that we strengthen the Investment Canada Act so that families across the country do not suffer as the EMD workers did.

[Pensions, March 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is not just today's seniors who worry about the Prime Minister's reckless OAS cuts. Young Canadians and middle-class families are left wondering if they can still afford to retire at 65. We know years of saving just is not enough anymore. Why? Because the Conservatives want to blow more money on failed fighter jets and a costly prisons agenda.

Why is the Prime Minister leaving tomorrow's seniors out in the cold? Why should seniors work two years longer to pay for the Conservatives' mismanagement?

[Seniors, March 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the member did not hear a single word I said. It is just the same old rhetoric and the same misinformation.

I have been travelling across the country, listening to what seniors have to say, and they have lots to say. They are not impressed with the Conservatives. They want their pensions protected. They want to retire in dignity, and they want their children to have a chance at the dignified retirement that they wish for themselves. They do not like the path the government is taking.

Investing in our seniors is smart, economically sensible and humane and has everything to do with how we should behave and nothing to do with what the government is perpetrating on the seniors of Canada.

[Seniors, March 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, this past December, I asked the Minister of State for Seniors a question about seniors' poverty in Canada. She said:

Seniors' poverty is something all Canadians should be concerned about.

Well, I agree. Yet a month later, her leader, the Prime Minister made an announcement in Davos, suggesting that changes to the OAS will involve either cuts or a change in age eligibility, or both, and that these cuts were coming down the pipe pretty soon. Along with the GIS, the OAS is our pension program to prevent seniors' poverty in Canada. Any cuts to it are cuts to benefits for the very poor. I am really unsure why the government wants to ask the poorest Canadians to take on the brunt of the planned budget cuts.

This money, OAS and GIS, is immediately reinvested into the economy. Seniors do not sit on their money. They spend it, every penny of it. Their spending helps create jobs and boosts our economy.

Clearly, the money to invest in OAS is readily available. The Parliamentary Budget Officer and the OECD have told us this very clearly. We have the money to lift seniors out of poverty in the present, and the money to address additional expenses the government will face in the future as our population continues to age.

Instead of investing in Canada, the Conservatives have chosen to saddle the treasury and Canadians with corporate tax giveaways that will not guarantee a single job.

The government's talking points suggest that income and pension splitting will help alleviate poverty for seniors. It is not true. Pension splitting benefits only those lucky enough to have adequate pension, not unattached Canadians nor the seniors who rely on the OAS and GIS to make ends meet. The government also trumpets the recent increase to the GIS, but the sad fact remains: it was less than half the amount needed to truly raise every senior out of poverty.

The billions of dollars trumpeted by the government in investment in affordable housing is actually $1.4 billion in total for the entire country. That is not enough. That number is a combination of federal, provincial and territorial money, not the total spending of the federal program. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that this money will even be spent. Provinces have to match the federal dollars. If they do not initiate the project, the housing will not be built.

The government's arguments do not make sense. This frightens me because it leads in exactly the wrong direction.

Seniors represent one of the fastest growing populations in Canada today. The number of seniors in Canada is projected to increase from 4.2 million in 2005 to 9.8 million by 2036. With so many seniors retiring in the coming years, we need a social safety net in place that will prevent dramatic increases in poverty. We need investment in seniors, investment in affordable and appropriate housing, long-term care, home care and pharmacare. This will boost our economy and save money in the long term while it protects our seniors.

I want to repeat my question from December, and I hope that the member is able to give a better answer than before.

There is an elderly couple in Toronto. She has asthma and bronchitis. He has Parkinson's. They can barely make ends meet. In fact, they just won a contest because of the depth of their needs. However, there are no winners here. Three hundred thousand seniors live in poverty. The government offers no help. Seniors should not have to turn to a contest just to keep their heads above water.

When will the government stop ignoring seniors and actually start helping them?

[Old Age Security, March 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Charlottetown for bringing this important issue to the House of Commons. Old age security is a vital tool in the fight to prevent poverty among seniors. The suggestion by the Prime Minister to raise the age of qualification for OAS to 67 years would have a direct impact not on the wealthy but on the poorest seniors. That reality has not been lost on current seniors nor the seniors of the future. In essence, the government is saying that it wants the poor to pay for the financial mismanagement of the Conservatives. Not only is this unacceptable, but it is absolutely unfathomable.

Let us not forget that the House has passed unanimously several NDP opposition day motions all in support of seniors' financial security, yet the government threatens changes to the OAS in blatant disregard of the will of the House and in contempt of the seniors who built our nation. For the life of me I do not understand why the government is trying to create more challenges for seniors, who deserve our respect.

As the NDP seniors critic, over the last couple of months I have had the chance to talk to people. I also have received many emails and letters from seniors across Canada, all reacting to the Prime Minister's suggestion that there may be changes to old age security. People are outraged, insulted and scared, and rightly so. Canadians have carefully planned for retirement at age 65. They cannot manage the difficult struggle that would be required for them to wait until age 67.

If the government really cared about seniors and retirement security, it would make substantive changes to the GIS right now that would have a significant impact on the lives of retirees. Instead of giving less than half of what is needed to increase the GIS, the government would have listened to New Democrats and made the full GIS contribution increase needed to lift every senior out of poverty.

Now the government suggests that changes will not affect current seniors or those approaching retirement. The Conservatives have said that those affected will have time to plan. No mention was made of those still paying mortgages, the cost of post-secondary education for their kids, and the real cost of increases to the cost of living.

What Conservatives do not say is that the poorest seniors are the ones who will be affected. The truth is that many low-paying jobs require substantial physical labour. That makes it far more difficult to work past age 65. Unfortunately, I do not expect the government will be sensitive to that reality. The same hard-working Canadians, the ones who rely on the OAS, are for the most part people who have struggled their entire lives. The reason they have not saved is that there is no money to save. As I have already said, every penny was spent on the necessities of life.

The scramble which the Prime Minister incited after his announcement at Davos about the suggested changes that would occur a few years down the road was a calculated tactic to divide future and current seniors. The government is pitting today's young people who are struggling to find work against seniors relieved that their retirement is secure.

We know that young people today are struggling to find work. They are forced to enter into the workforce later in life than their parents and grandparents did. Taking inflation into account, the truth of the situation is that people are earning less now than in the past. Too many young people cannot find work to their full potential and consequently are going to be forced to work longer and retire later than their parents did. Apparently, that will be at age 67. All of this is because the Conservative government wants to build new prisons, give huge tax breaks to profitable corporations and purchase expensive fighter jets.

I have been travelling across the country listening to what seniors have to say. What I have been hearing is that seniors are not buying the government line. They are worried about their children and grandchildren. They want the best for them. They want to make sure they are well looked after and refuse to accept anything less than what they want for themselves.

Seniors are very wise. They know a bait and switch when they see one. They also know that the OAS is an investment, not just for themselves, but for all of our society. Seniors on OAS spend all of their money in their neighbourhoods. That money is reinvested in our economy, in local businesses and in community jobs. OAS is not a burden on the economy. It is an investment. Our seniors make an investment. They are not pulling down our economy.

From a crass monetary perspective, it is significantly cheaper to keep people out of poverty than to deal with the ramifications of poverty, including an increased burden on our medical and judicial systems.

I want to be very clear. The money we invest in OAS is readily available. We have the money to lift seniors out of poverty in the present and to address the additional expenses that the government will face in the future. We have heard from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the money is there now and in the future. We have heard it from the OECD. Right now, it costs about 2.3% of GDP to provide services and pensions for seniors. By 2030, it will be about 3.2% of GDP. Thereafter, it will fall rapidly to 1.4%.

However, instead of investing in Canada and in our social safety net, the Conservatives have chosen to saddle the treasury and Canadians with corporate tax giveaways that do not guarantee a single new job. No one knows better than Londoners, who remember what happened to the Electro-Motive Diesel workers.

Seniors represent one of the fastest-growing populations in Canada today. The number of seniors in Canada is projected to increase from about 4.2 million in 2005 to 9.8 million in 2036. Many more seniors will be retiring in the years to come. Therefore, we need to have a social safety net in place to avoid dramatic increases in the rate of poverty.

It is about intelligent, thoughtful planning, which is something that we have not seen from the government. In fact, the Conservatives are clearly making the wrong decisions on how to care for the increased number of seniors by 2036. They have failed the plan and they have fallen short of what is really needed: investment in home care, investment in long-term care, investment in pharmacare and increased access to resources. All of these will save us money in the long run.

We also need appropriate, affordable housing and investment in geriatric studies and in our communities. That is what is important. Tragically, the Conservatives do not seem to know that. They do not know how to be government.

The concerns of the future are very real. Today, only 38.5% of Canadian workers have workplace pensions. Nearly one-third have no retirement savings at all. More than 3.5 million Canadians are not saving enough in RRSPs for what used to be called their “golden years” and 75% of workers are not even participating in a registered pension plan. Clearly, the notion that retirement savings can be adequately accounted for through purchases of RRSPs does not work.

Urgent government action is needed. Pension reform is needed.

It should further be noted that private retirement savings are concentrated in a small percentage of families. According to Statistics Canada, 25% of families hold 84% of those pension assets, while 3 out of 10 families have no private pension at all.

Seniors have worked hard all their lives. They have played by the rules. Now, they simply want access to the programs and services that their hard-earned tax dollars helped to make. One soon-to-be senior told me, “I made the sacrifices. I raised honest, responsible children. Now I want to rest, to retire and to enjoy the contributions I've made to my community. I earned a secure retirement. Please don't allow anyone to steal it from me. I will not be cheated of the retirement that I deserve.”

New Democrats will not allow the government to cheat the seniors of the present, nor the seniors of the future. They deserve that security.

[Old Age Security, March 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Charlottetown, for this very important motion today and I would ask him what his understanding is in regard to this change.

It seems to me that it is a significant change to suggest that the retirement age be increased to age 67 from age 65 because we know that those who live on provincial benefits, those with health problems who are living with the challenges of disability, will lose those benefits at age 65. That means those same people will be without any income from age 65 to 67.

I wonder if the member for Charlottetown has heard any indication that the government consulted with the provinces, talked to them or even the private insurers about this very significant change.

[Petitions, March 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from the community of London and former workers of Electro-Motive Diesel.

The petitioners want the Parliament of Canada to know that Caterpillar illegally removed production equipment from EMD's plant in London against the collective agreement, that it forced a lockout on December 30, 2011, and demanded that the workers take in excess of a 50% reduction in wages and benefits and accept a reduced and insecure pension plan. All of this was despite the fact that these workers had made Electro-Motive Diesel a very profitable company. In fact, productivity had increased by 20% and profits were up by billions of dollars from last year.

The petitioners want the Parliament of Canada to investigate the conditions of sale of Electro-Motive Diesel to Caterpillar and to immediately enforce any and all appropriate penalties should there be violations under the Investment Canada Act.

In light of recent debates in this House about the need to strengthen the Investment Canada Act, it is most appropriate that the petitioners are calling on the government to make improvements to the Investment Canada Act so that the travesty that happened to the workers and their families in London, Ontario does not happen to another family.