Health care services must be available and accessible to all seniors across the country.
1. Establish a National Pharmacare Program to lower costs of medication and to equalize the availability of prescription drugs across the country for seniors
2. Continue contributions to benefits for older workers by employers.
FINANCES
Income for all seniors must be adequate to meet the real cost of living.
1. Raise the LICO to more accurately reflect the real cost of living.
2. Increase the base amount of GIS payments to meet the readjusted LICO and therefore the real cost of living.
3. Reimburse all pensioners the full amount of the shortfall caused by Statistic Canada’s admitted underestimation of the CPI between 2001 and 2006.
4. Include fluctuating volatile items (e.g., food, fuel, etc.) in the calculations of the CPI to ensure realistic increases to pensions and supplements. 5. Reform the 50% claw back rate of GIS payments to include a band of allowable income above the LICO without initiating a claw back of GIS.
6. Change the base level of taxable income from $15,000 to $25,000.
7. Extend the CPP drop out provision to include family caregivers who leave work or reduce their hours of work to provide elder care.
8. Provide the option for workers over 65 to continue contributing to CPP, adjusting current CPP income accordingly.
9. Continue contributions to pensions for older workers by employers.
10. Extend EI eligibility beyond the current six-week end of life period for family caregivers who leave work or reduce their hours of work to provide elder care.
11. Reimburse CPP retroactive payments beyond the current eleven months and with interest to cover the complete missed period of payments due to a late application.
RIGHTS
Policies must be adopted that ensure a quality of life for all ages.
1. Abolish Mandatory Retirement in all federally regulated industries as well as in those provinces and territories where it exists — without replacing it with Mandatory Employment.
2. Change labour codes to protect workers of all ages rather than the current 18 to 64.
3. Provide training, retraining, upgrading, phased retirement, etc. for older workers.
4. Define affordable housing according to real annual low income rather than a provincial average and make it available and accessible. ______________________________________________
(1) Statistics Canada, A Portrait of Seniors 2006, (Ottawa, 2007) pp. 67-68
(2) Fifty cents on each dollar is clawed back from GIS from every dollar of income above the LICO
(3) An estimated 130,000 seniors who are eligible for GIS have not applied, according to pension expert Richard Shillington;
