44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 15, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to be in the House today to talk about this important motion. We are talking about the guaranteed income supplement and what we need to do to ensure that seniors can make it through life in Canada right now. One of the greatest jobs I had before becoming a member of Parliament was being a constituency assistant for 11 years for Joe Preston, the member for Parliament for Elgin—Middlesex—London. He was a nice guy.
For 11 years, I was able to work with him and some of the things I worked on were cases for the Canada Revenue Agency, Service Canada, foreign affairs, Passport Canada and all of those things. One of the most important things I did with the customer service we provided was to sit down with the constituents who would come into our office. They would tell us they needed to apply for something, they were only bringing in $700 for their pension and they got a little top-up from their old age security pension, but they did not have any money and their cost of living was much higher than what they received. I had the opportunity to work with seniors in my community in Elgin—Middlesex—London before entering this place for 11 years and to understand the struggles that our seniors are going through.
I look at the experience that I had from 2004 to 2015 and recognize that times have changed greatly.
I want to go back to looking at why people get the guaranteed income supplement in the first place. These are our seniors who are over the age of 65 and are not making enough money to pay their bills. They are looking for a little extra because the cost of living continues to rise. They are, in many case, on fixed incomes. They may have some annuities and they may have things like that. Many times they know that, at the end of the month, on the third day, on the last business day of the month, they are going to receive their old age security, their CPP and the top-up of their GIS, if they are low-income.
I know at the beginning of this pandemic, like all of the members in the House, we had phone calls from everybody. There were phone calls coming from small businesses. There were parents calling, who needed to go to work and there was no place to put their child. There were a lot of things happening at that time. It was important that we worked along with the government to find resolutions and to find solutions for seniors who were having a very difficult time and for people across the country who were having a very difficult time.
Just last year, of course, the government continued to talk about how they gave every senior $500. Well, it was great, because on behalf of my campaign, I would like to thank the many people who said they did not need that money. This was a universal input. They said they did not need the money and they gave it to my campaign or gave it to charities.
However, what is important here is that there are seniors who, from cheque to cheque, from month to month, know what their incomes are going to be but they do not know what to expect from their costs. A lot of this comes from the cost of inflation.
Anyone who knows me, they know I am a mom of five, and they know I love my mom and dad. My dad is one of the most inspirational people I have in my life. The thing I talk about with my dad is the cost of groceries. My dad will go through the flyer, each and every week, and will say to me, “No Frills has a ham on sale and the eye of round is on sale at A&P.” This is what my dad does. When I know the prices have gone up, I know this because my dad, my mister shopper guy, my 85-year-old senior father who goes out for groceries, tells me that things have changed.
I want to share with the House, before I get into my dad's grocery bill, a couple of scenarios that were brought into my office. Jena in my office has been there since 2015 and has worked with seniors for years, so when she calls me, panicking, that means that there is a problem. She calls panicking because she knows there are seniors who are not paying their mortgage, seniors who are not able to pay their rent that month and seniors who cannot afford their bills or their medications. That is because of what has happened today with GIS.
I have heard a lot of this conversation and I will let everyone know, as a constituency assistant, I always believe there is a solution.
Last year, when we were talking about this, my solution was to call the Minister of Seniors, where I was truly scuffed off. I explained to her my experience. I explained to her what I had seen. Basically, I was told that it would all work out. It has not worked out and I want to read these scenarios to the House.
Scenario one is a lady in her seventies who never retired and continued to work until the pandemic hit and her place of employment closed permanently. She went on CERB through Service Canada and collected the full amount. She continuously looked for work and switched from CERB to CRB, but due to her age she was unable to find employment. She thought she was being responsible and used the CRB to pay down her line of credit that she has. She was officially retired, as it looked like she was going to have to be. She also had fewer monthly expenses. Because she was unable to option off her CRB, she was no longer entitled to the GIS and her monthly income was approximately $1,100 a month.
Let us talk about $1,100 a month. I can tell everyone that if they want to rent an apartment in my town, it is $1,200 a month. If they want to rent one in London, it is $1,200 a month. If they want to rent a bedroom where people are sharing amenities, maybe it is $700. However, most seniors do not have that flexibility. We are asking a senior who is making $1,100 a month to feed themselves, to pay rent and everything else, and it is all okay. The Minister of Seniors knew this last year when I was talking to her and now, seven months later, a person making $1,100 is still making $1,100.
It is great that we are pushing through this legislation and I know we need to do this, but we have to reflect on how we got here in the first place. The government was not listening when it knew this problem was going on last year. The member for Abbotsford talked about that. He talked about our bringing this up for a year. That means the seniors I am talking about in my scenarios, each and every month, are having to choose between food or electricity. That is what seniors are having to do.
The second scenario I would like to mention is a gentleman who was not entitled to CRB and received $14,000 in 2020. He is now trying to live on approximately $1,100. The province is now trying to assist him as he can barely pay for his rent with that income. We have looked at some different scenarios. Let us say someone is working at Walmart and they made $500. They were being given a $2,000 CRB payment; we know that. Do people really expect these seniors were thinking that the government was going to turn around and say, “Hey, we are cutting off the GIS and this is taxable.”
Yes, all the parliamentarians here, the 338 people who would have voted to ensure that seniors and Canadians had these benefits were going to do that. We knew that there was going to be mistakes, but it has been almost two years and the mistake has not been fixed. That is the problem here. When the member for Abbotsford is talking about the mistakes that are being made and what the Liberals did, let us reflect on the fact that they had time to change what they were doing and for months they sat on their hands while seniors were going without. That is the bottom line.
Let us now talk about that $1,100 and what it can actually afford. I want to talk to members about the fact that seniors really do not have a lot of money to pay for these expenses. The cost of living continues to go up.
I want to talk about my dad. My dad is probably watching today because that is what he does when he is 85 years old. He sits in his house with my mom, who is 81. They go out, they get groceries, they go for a drive and they do simple things like that, and, especially during COVID, they have not had a lot of opportunities to go and enjoy life. What my parents do enjoy is grocery shopping. What they do enjoy is looking at the prices of food. What I did was I looked at the cost of living and I looked at the costs that were begin given by Stats Canada. I want to talk about my parents' shopping list, comparing it from March 2020 to December 31, 2021.
Corn Flakes have gone up from $5.88 to $6.67. It is a dollar and that does not seem like a big deal, but a dollar makes a big difference when someone does not have a lot of dollars. Bacon has gone from $6.96 to $8.66. To all of those out there, I will be honest, I love listening to Liberals talk about bacon. If people want to eat bacon, then go for it. They have the right to do so. It is their choice.
Gas is the one thing that really concerns me. Gas was $0.91 going into this pandemic in March 2020. In December, it was $1.41. Today, in the city of St. Thomas and in the city of London, it is $1.57. If my father wanted to take my mom out for a drive to go get a bacon sandwich, they cannot afford to do it very much anymore.
I think of my parents as being frugal and safe with their money. They are brilliant when it comes to finances. I think of the seniors who are living alone, who are looking for help and who are living in isolation. I think of those seniors who may not have someone else's income to help them. I think of the seniors who need somebody to come and clean their house or who need extra things like PPE. None of that is available to them.
I would like to say to the government that of course I am going to support the change to the GIS. Of course, I supported these things coming out, but the government should have fixed it last year. Please get back on track so the future generation is not lost like the Liberals have done to this generation.
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Mr. Speaker, I would have liked to have seen that passed last year.
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Mr. Speaker, this is one of the strongest programs that we have in our social safety net. When we know that the cost of living has gone up to 5% but seniors are only getting an increase of 2.8%, of course it has to be increased. They cannot pay their bills. Until this government gets inflation under control, I think that we need to look at all of this.
When we are talking about seniors' programs, we need to look at the important bill put forward by the member for Sarnia—Lambton. We need to look at RIFs and RSPs. There are a lot of things that we need to look at, because every senior has individual needs, and that program needs to be solid.
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Mr. Speaker, there are so many parts to that question that I would like to answer.
However, the member talked about taxing the wealthy more. I believe that through this pandemic, we did see a recovery take shape. We did see the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is absolutely what we have seen today, but I think that right now what we need to do is give greater opportunities.
We also need to look at our health care system and recognize that what we thought was a great system failed us, so what can we do to ensure that we have a universal health care system that works for all Canadians from coast to coast to coast?
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