Human Resources committee  Instead of indexing it to prices, which means its value relative to a poverty line like the low-income measure or its value as replacing x per cent of the individual's income, which by definition will diminish over time, index this to wages just like we index the RRSP limits. The

Human Resources committee  I think your question relates somewhat to Monsieur Robillard's question about the seniors and the aging within the seniors. I read the finance minister's book about retirement, and it's quite good. He talks about three stages of retirement: a stage where you're reasonably healt

Human Resources committee  For a substantial proportion of the population, that's just not going to happen, so I think we have some real issues here. This morning, I was at The Ottawa Mission for three hours. I do it every Tuesday morning, and I play this game. I try to guess.... It's hard to judge the a

Human Resources committee  There's not one population. It's not homogeneous. Some people are going to need caregivers. Some people are going to need a home. Some people want to stay home. Some people have grandchildren and want to stay home. We want to allow for people to make choices that fit their needs.

Human Resources committee  I've done a lot of work on income tax and people not getting benefits. If you get the GIS numbers monthly from the federal government, you can see. It used to be that the number of people getting GIS dropped every July by 10% and recovered by September. That was people being kick

Human Resources committee  Well, certainly at the time when a low-income person is working, they are going to be required to make additional contributions to a payroll tax, to an investment that is not a very good investment for them. One of the primary beneficiaries will be the people who administer the g

Human Resources committee  Yes, and for most seniors, by 50%. If you take $1,000 out of your RRSP, your GIS the next year will go down by $500. For some of them, it will go down by $750, and for some of them, because of the GIS top-up that the provinces administer, it will go down by $1,000. You will get n

Human Resources committee  The enhanced Canada Pension Plan that was announced roughly 14 months ago, in June, is going to start collecting more contributions. Those will build up over time and will pay additional benefits on top of what the base Canada Pension Plan pays, but if you're a GIS recipient, it

Human Resources committee  Here are two very quick comments. I get irritated when the financial literacy thing is that we have to make people smarter. There's an attitude like that in financial literacy often. When I wrote the report on financial literacy for the task force, my take was that we should m

Human Resources committee  Do you mean do an asset test?

Human Resources committee  No.

Human Resources committee  I'm a statistician; I do this as.... I was paid once by a maritime province to work out the assets of people who get GIS. I accessed StatsCan data, and you could do it. You could say that we are not going to pay GIS to somebody who lives in a $500,000 or an $800,000 house. To d

Human Resources committee  Of course you should income-test GIS. For OAS we have an income test now; the clawback starts at around $75,000. We could talk about how you might want to play with it. For CPP there is no income testing. I will make the comment that we spend about $10 billion to $11 billio

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  I don't think I am well qualified to answer that. I know the Ottawa Council on Aging does its presentations in both languages. I've done presentations, and they assist with that. The question of housing.... I think my expertise is more in income security.