44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 22, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/22/22 10:53:29 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, in which he talked about the importance of helping Canadians get through this inflationary period. He talked about helping families, but there is another group of people living on fixed incomes and that is seniors.
My colleague just talked about an affordable housing strategy. Having an affordable place to live is one thing, but having a fixed income is another.
Does my colleague understand that seniors need help? The government is planning to help those 75 and over by upping old age security, but seniors 65 and up need help too. That is what it means to help people on fixed incomes who need support during this inflationary period.
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- Mar/22/22 10:54:04 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is one of the most important challenges that we as a government have to tackle. When it comes to our most vulnerable seniors, we needed to make sure that every Canadian retires in dignity and that is why our government moved to reverse the Conservative change that increased the age of eligibility for retirement to 67 years. We lowered that back down to age 65, which gives thousands of dollars to seniors right when they need it at retirement.
We have also moved to increase the OAS and the GIS to make sure that seniors have the resources they need. Importantly, and this is crucial, we are indexing those measures to inflation, which means that, as inflationary pressures grow, those benefits will grow as well.
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- Mar/22/22 11:11:13 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right.
I rarely agree with my colleague from Winnipeg North, but I agree with him. We need revenue to support seniors. I can easily find some revenue for him. If we stopped supporting the oil and gas industry, we would have some revenue.
From 2015 to 2017, $111 billion was allocated to support the most polluting sector in the world. We must reconsider this. From 2018 to 2020, $78 billion was allocated. Maybe if we ended all these oil and gas subsidies, we could use that money to do something more logical, by which I mean increase health transfers.
I invite members to think about that. That is a good starting point.
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- Mar/22/22 12:59:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I mentioned the old age security, the Canada pension plan and the child benefit in my speech because I wanted to remind everyone that all of these supports are actually indexed to inflation, which will help the most vulnerable in our society. This is not the case in many other countries.
In terms of what additional supports we will be providing to Canadians, we have and continue to implement the national child care plan and we continue to provide support for our seniors. As I mentioned, we increased the guaranteed income supplement and we plan on supporting and increasing old age security for those seniors 75 and older. We are also looking at the housing affordability issue and we are looking to take urgent, concrete steps to help resolve this issue moving forward.
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- Mar/22/22 1:38:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will echo my colleague's last few words: The intent is good, but the approach is bad.
That may also be the case with seniors' income, that of seniors age 75 and older. The intent is good, but the government is overlooking seniors age 65 to 75. That is not fair. Conservative members are talking about how hard it is to access reliable public transit in rural areas. The 2022–23 budget includes $4 million for active transportation, or cycling, and only $2.5 million for rural public transit for all of Canada.
Would improving that budget not help ease the burden on those less fortunate?
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- Mar/22/22 1:53:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about what his government has done with respect to green or energy-efficient retrofits. That is good. In the meantime, however, the numbers indicate that his government continues to invest heavily in the oil industry and in pipelines.
Would it not be better to invest that money in programs that help the victims of inflation, people with fixed incomes like seniors, including by increasing old age security starting at age 65, instead of 75 like his government is preparing to do?
Would it not be better to invest that money in the energy transition, in research and development, in much greener programs?
If that money were invested in those two things, it would go a long way to helping people deal with the problem of inflation.
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- Mar/22/22 1:53:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, our government has committed to and in fact ran on the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies and most recently has accelerated the phase-out, which does create capacity in past and upcoming budgets to support the very kinds of programs that the member raised so diligently today.
This will allow us to allocate more money to seniors and those living in need, more money for other methods of low- and zero-emission transit, as well as other means of heating homes and running industries.
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- Mar/22/22 2:31:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when we got elected in 2015, it was on a commitment to lower taxes for the middle class and raise them for the wealthiest 1%. We did that. Then we moved forward with more supports for seniors and more supports for families. We have continued to look at ways of enabling economic growth and support for small businesses, while at the same time making sure that the tax system is fair.
These bells ringing are not ideal for me.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Mar/22/22 5:07:02 p.m.
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My colleague spoke about her riding. My riding of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou is huge. There is a lot of ground to cover. I understand very well what she is saying; however I believe that instead we should be helping seniors or finding ways to help the disadvantaged.
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- Mar/22/22 5:24:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from the Bloc for what I believe to be a remarkable speech. We have really hit, in many ways, the crux of the issue facing Canadians today, which is the fact that we are not spending enough on those who need that support. We are not even making sure that those who are profiteering are paying their fair share, and the member highlighted that there is a relationship between these two things. Those who profit and those who exceedingly use that profit to do less justice for our tax system are actually depriving those who need it most, including seniors. I was touched by the fact that the member encouraged support in the House for seniors, for example to increase OAS, which is something that constituents in my community have been calling for for decades.
I would ask the member to expand for a few moments on how valuable expanding OAS is for ensuring that seniors have the dignity and security they need while moving into this crisis.
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- Mar/22/22 5:25:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
Yes, we could help seniors directly by increasing the guaranteed income supplement and old age security.
I will make a connection with food, which is a very important issue to talk about. It is often said that seniors living alone do not eat properly and sometimes have to choose between food and medication because inflation is too high. I always put that in the context of the environment. Consider the droughts in western Canada and the wildfires that have caused crop failures and increased the price of food for everyone, including seniors. The consequences of the climate crisis ultimately are that we are paying more and inflation is rising. Fighting climate change involves dealing with everything that is very human, particularly people's health.
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