Finance committee  Once again, thanks for the question. According to the statistics, caregivers are mainly women aged over 50 years, or even closer to 60 years. As for the tax credit, income generated by these people is low. Needless to say, if a tax credit is non-refundable, caregivers cannot benefit if their income is in the lowest tax bracket.

Finance committee  This tax credit was introduced in Quebec at least a few years ago. We succeeded in having it enhanced, by lowering the eligibility age and increasing the amount. Owing to labour shortages in just about every field across Canada, including the health sector, we believe that certain benefits should be made available to workers, not only to keep them working longer, but to bring them back into the labour force.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. As I mentioned, people who receive the guaranteed income supplement are the least well off. They live near the poverty line. When the cost of living goes up quickly, people earning an income can handle some of the extra costs, including groceries. For those receiving the guaranteed income supplement, it's difficult to stretch things any farther, if I can put it that way, in terms of money.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. It's a very important question. Over 30% of seniors aged 65 years and over receive the guaranteed income supplement. On average, they receive $20,000 or less per year. Of course if that has an impact on calculations for the following year, it is taken into account.

Justice committee  Unfortunately, in quite a while, about 10 years' time.

Justice committee  We're talking about the right to social participation, so the right of a person to continue to contribute to society for as long as he or she can. Even if they have a disease like dementia, they have moments of lucidity, which allows them to regain control. They can do this. The Public Curator of Quebec has already begun to take into account the situation of people who are not totally deprived of moments of lucidity.

Justice committee  Thank you for your question. For three years, from 2013 to 2016, several experts from around the world looked at what tools could be put in place regarding the rights of older people. I'm going to talk about rights in a broad way while focusing on what you asked me about. We found that there were no tools dedicated to the rights of older adults.

Justice committee  This was mentioned earlier by another witness, but unfortunately we know that seniors often experience neglect or abuse from family caregivers. Yes, it does happen.

Justice committee  Again, thank you for your question. There are several aspects to this. In Quebec, there is a complaint review system, and a bill has been introduced to strengthen these reviews, first, and to include complaints related to organizational abuse as a second step. Of course, it doesn't have everything right now, as there are requests to add things.

Justice committee  There are two things. In fact, I think we certainly have tools that can do the job if we want to go forward in that direction. On the other hand, the definitions of the various forms of abuse and violence are not specific enough with respect to the tools that we currently have. That's what we're hearing, and that's why we think there needs to be a major overhaul of the complaint review system, as well as the consequences when it is determined that the complaint has merit and there's a prosecution.

Justice committee  Actually, it remains to be proven that this would be covered. For example, there are people who forget or fail to give someone medication, forget to provide hygiene care, force-feed them rather than taking the time to feed them, or control the person rather than taking the time to let them do what they can do.

Justice committee  Thank you for your question. We became aware of a very significant problem, which was that people felt very isolated. One of the reasons for this was that there was a temporary pause in home care while health instructions were sorted out. Unfortunately, that temporary pause became very long.