To the Editor:
As I watch the debate on Bill C-26, I receive further confirmation that today’s seniors are living close to or over the poverty line. Dollar devaluation, increased costs of living of maintaining homes, hydro and insurance costs etc. are spiraling, as are costs of temporary and long term care, placing the people who have worked to build Canada at risk of going hungry, having no shelter and ending up living on the streets they paid to pave.
It is even doubtful that this bill will create a better standard of living for those Canadians still in the workforce and retiring 40 years from now, such as Premier Trudeau’s own children. Why should these future retirees believe the government of the future will provide adequately for them when the government of today is proving it cannot adequately provide for today’s seniors?
MPs who gave themselves each $40,000 additional yearly wages under this government already have fat paycheques and exorbitant pension funds. Our current PM is trotting around the globe like a rockstar, bailing out corporations and threatening to use today’s pension funds to rebuild infrastructure for Canada. How will such a plan improve the fiduciary value of current pensioners’ investments? This approach is deemed as supposedly creating and saving Canadian jobs, yet these are responsibilities of all Canadians, not just pensioners.
There are two choices at this point as I see it. Defeat this bill or amend it to correct its failure to substantially address the financial needs of today’s seniors or bring a new bill forward to improve senior’s earnings so they can live comfortably, without fear of not being able to pay hydro bills, live decently and eat regular, healthy meals.
I know many seniors who are helping or actually raising their grandchildren as Canadian families struggle to survive. We are bringing in refugee families to swell the workforce and provide services for an aging Canadian public. If seniors cannot afford to hire these people, they too will struggle. Projections that in the next 10-20 years will see 1/3 of Canada’s population being seniors, provides no hope for today’s seniors that their circumstances will improve unless substantial efforts are made today. Currently, Bill C-26 falls far short of that goal.
Patricia Martin
Creston, BC
