Status of Women committee  Well, thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciated it.

Status of Women committee  We have, and we do it at every opportunity we've been given. We talk beyond pensions, of course, as I said in the little blurb I gave to the staff of the committee. We look increasingly at all age groups, which is one of the reasons I referred to single-parent mothers. We have a

Status of Women committee  In terms of benefits, again, let me go back. The Canada Pension Plan re-organized because of the attack on the whole idea of the Canada Pension Plan. Of course, that wonderful woman from Quebec went on to Parliament Hill. That was phenomenal. We were formed at the same time. We'v

Status of Women committee  I think there's a distinction to be made between the RRSP and the management of, especially, mutual funds, which are at much higher cost in Canada than they are in the United States. The charges in Canada are, to me, offensively high. The Canada Pension Plan has a relatively low

Status of Women committee  There are nine short-term strategies, but we did e-mail them today.

Status of Women committee  It's open to anyone. We have been around since 1969. We are a national organization. I was national president at one time. Our national president at the present time is in Prince Edward Island. We exist across the country. We are affiliated with a broad range of other organizatio

Status of Women committee  That burden has tended to fall on the municipalities, because in many cases municipalities have picked up the cost of social housing. Many municipalities, such as the City of Toronto, have designated housing for older people. There, they have the support services, the infrastruct

Status of Women committee  I should confess, I'm a political scientist by background and I know the Constitution. I know that under the Constitution the primary responsibility is provincial. But over time, under the equalization payments and the health and...well, the transformed SHST, or whatever they wer

Status of Women committee  New Horizons programs are great, but they're very limited. The maximum dollar amount is very low; they're short term—the vast majority aren't long-term programs—so there is an issue around them. You can do a wonderful pilot, but you don't have the money to continue it. I praise

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. Elder abuse crosses every ethno-cultural community in this country. It is not unique to any one group. The more difficult issue, though, is this: where there is a language barrier for an older person, how do you identify that they're at risk? How do you identify tha

Status of Women committee  The idea of a guaranteed annual income, as you know, is not new; it's been around for decades. We believe it is one way of ensuring that we don't ensure the deprivation of people in our society. We have lived with poverty from the beginning. I would argue that in today's society,

Status of Women committee  I think it would be wonderful. I know the provinces have been pushing the federal government to have a meeting on pension issues. I would strongly support it. What we would strongly recommend is to ensure that there was enough preparation at the provincial level for the groups

Status of Women committee  I'm sorry, I'm not too specific.

Status of Women committee  What I said was they are at risk of being poor because they have to wait a long period of time--10 years--in order to be eligible for OAS and GIS. Certainly in the city of Toronto there are a number of older parents who have been brought into this country to do child care, and th

Status of Women committee  I agree with you. In fact, I was one of the instigators to develop the prevention of elder abuse policy lens that has been adopted by the Province of Ontario, and we have taken it across the country. It's a way of identifying the different forms of abuse. And yes, you're right, f