Financial Insecurity Targeted in CARP Federal Pre-budget Submission

CARP recommends that the federal government do more to reduce poverty rates among older and retired Canadian women while ensuring that they achieve sustainable financial security as they age by:

• Providing additional ‘drop-out’ years from CPP calculations to women who perform unpaid caregiving duties
• Providing low-income, single, divorced, or widowed women between the ages of 60 and 64 with supplementary income

3. Caregiver Support:

Too many Canadians struggle with caregiving duties that often remove them from them from the labour force, causing both immediate and long-term financial distress. According to a 2008 Statistics Canada report, in 2007, about 2.7 million Canadians aged 45 and over, or approximately one-fifth of the total in this age group, provided some form of unpaid care to people 65 years of age or older who had long-term health problems. These individuals provided vital care, saving the public healthcare system billions of dollars, often at great personal expense. CARP recommends that the federal Government implement a National Family Caregiver Strategy to support the millions of Canadians who are providing informal care to an older loved one by:
• Providing them with financial support
• Ensuring workplace protection
• Formally integrating personal caregiving into health care system These three elements of financial insecurity do not exhaust the many ways that older Canadians struggle to make ends meets, but they draw much needed attention to the fact that financial insecurity is comprised of a complex set of issues that affect older Canadians in different ways. This particular submission may be targeted at the Federal Government, but other levels of government can expect to hear from CARP soon. To read the full submission, click on the following link

Keywords: poverty