Sometimes stories bubble up from the grassroots; this really does appear to be one of those times.
Emails have been coming into our newsrooms and into the mailboxes of some of our talk show hosts demanding that something be done to stop a private members bill Bill C-428 , put forward by Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, the representative from Brampton-Springdale. Normally the best way to defeat a private members bill is to ignore it since they rarely pass. This bill however, has generated an old-fashioned write-in campaign.
Ms. Dhalla’s bill aims to reduce the residency requirement for obtaining an Old Age Security pension from 10 years to 3 years. According to the video posted below, seniors who come from some parts of the world have to wait longer than others in order to get their OAS.
The people emailing our stations are universally upset at the idea of Dhalla’s bill. If supporters have emailed, then no one has told me. Here is a sample,
“As someone who has worked in this country for over 40yrs and now retired, I very strongly oppose this Bill ever seeing the light of day and hope that our government will continue to deny this request. To even consider that someone who has been here 3yrs....who has contributed not one cent to this country....would receive the same OAS/GIS as myself and my husband, makes me absolutely livid, furious!!! 3 YEARS!!”
After reading that brief excerpt of the email you would have to think that the Liberals would be crazy to support such an idea, or perhaps you are thinking this is an Astroturfing campaign from the Conservatives. This same text has appeared elsewhere in the Internet and is being passed around by email, so there is a campaign, yet the Conservatives assure me that it is not them behind the campaign and the growing amount of correspondence it is generating.
But does the government support the idea behind the bill?
Every once in a while you’ll find a private members bill the government will like the sound of and when that happens you can expect them to steal the idea and make it their own, but conversations with people in the relevant ministers offices and the PMO tells me this will not happen this time. It appears the Conservatives oppose this bill and are confident that most Canadians, including most immigrants, will oppose the idea of anyone getting a pension after just three years in this country.
The Conservatives are probably right on this count. As someone who grew up in an immigrant community and in a neighbourhood where those with parents from Canada were the odd ones out, this is likely to anger the hundreds of thousands of immigrants that spent decades working in this country. My mother came over more than 40 years ago, her brother came in the mid 70s, if their 61 year-old younger brother were to come here in the next year and get a pension at 65, they would be furious with government.
In her introduction of the bill, Ms. Dhalla lists seniors from China, India, and the Caribbean (not a country), as among those facing discrimination from the current system. While I can’t provide full details yet, what I can garner from the Service Canada web site is that the places Ms. Dhalla lists are places that do not have agreements with Canada on providing pensions to each other’s citizens. Poland should rightfully have been on that list; anyone who has visited certain parts of the east end of Toronto knows this country has seen plenty of Poles coming to Canada over the decades. The reason Poland isn’t on the list though, is that Canada and Poland signed an agreement on pensions in April of 2008 and it comes into force, I am told, on October 1st.
There will be plenty of interesting questions about this bill and the campaign against it when Parliament resumes today. Listen in, or check back here to get all the updates.
Brian Lilley is the Ottawa Bureau Chief for radio stations Newstalk 1010 CFRB Toronto and CJAD 800 in Montreal. Follow Brian on Twitter to get the latest as it happens.
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Comments
Sounds like another way for the Libs to show how disconnected they are from reality. Bring on the Conservative majority!!!
Also, Brian, you didn't mention that your mom and dad didn't speak English!! (:
I am writing this because I read the article and think the policy is stupid - I, too, hope it never sees the light of day. Does that make me part of this "Conservative astroturf" you talk about? How much does it pay?
So why the hell should we consider pensions for short term immigrants? When we sign pension treaties with India China Caribbean states guess who gets the best of it? How many Canadians want to immigrate to those places? Ruby Dahlla should look after her domestic help better and leave public policy to rational people.
I am with Ron on this one, but the woman who thinks these people are going to get a full pension,is thinking wrong, a person must have lived in the country for 40 years after age 18 to receive a full pension,there is a few exceptions. I had a link to the OAS page, but this posting does not allow links. So, go to google type in OAS, and scroll down to eligibility conditions...
My mother recently retired, she raised six children and worked for 50 years and what is she suppose to live on a month? Well that would be less than 900 dollars a month, she didn't fill out some obscure form and now her heart pills and other meds are not being covered by the government as a form of penalty-for how long the snivel servants can't tell me or won't. Long story short I pay her bills because the Feds and Provincial Governments do whatever they can to deny our seniors a living pension. Now I'm suppose to fork out more taxdollars for immigrant seniors to live in poverty, no thankyou Ruby.
Ruby Dhallia's real home is India, not Canada. Her sole purpose for being here is to work for the Liberal party. She has zero vested interests in Canada, its traditions and moral values. If she did, she would have never,ever tabled this bill.
Just more proof that the Liberals will do anything for the ethnic vote even to the point of selling out long time or born Canadians.
It is reasonable to expect that a person live in Canada for a minimum period of time before being granted the right to a lifelong public benefit. The government is taking a fair and responsible approach to providing benefits to seniors.
There are currently 50 social security agreements in place with a wide variety of countries. These allow period of residence and contributions in the other country to be used to meet the 10-year requirement.
At a cost of over $700 million, the proposal in this Bill is costly and irresponsible and would place an unfair burden on Canadian taxpayers, many of whom have contributed to our country for decades.
I agree that 3 years is a very short time for an immigrant to qualify for the OAS/GIS. Even 10 years may be too short. And while we are on this subject. I think Canadian Citizenship should also take longer to acquire - not the cummulative 3 years of landed immigrant status, but rather 5. (For the record, I was an immigrant and became a citizen over 16 years ago).
Regards,
Jaime
Due to language and cultural barriers that increase isolation and dependency, the elderly immigrant population is highly vulnerable to abuse. This bill increases the incentive for unscrupulous family members and caregivers to encourage elders, who might otherwise be happy and content in their home county, to immigrate to Canada for the opportunity to exploit their pension incomes.
If this bill is passed, I will lose any respect I ever had for my country. Our seniors scrape by as it is, and to just freely give this money away to people with no substantial input to Canada would be a slap in the face.
My father-in-law had a foreign pension, which this country taxed heavily, and he lived and worked here for more than 45 years. His foreign pension was triple what he would have received here,but he earned it, by leaving his health in those european and Canadian coal mines. This is Canada, pensions are for our seniors, and those immigrants who have paid their full dues, as ours do! We support enough people in other countries. It is time for those countries to support their people here.
To Geoff, from 6:40 am...
The three parties of polititians have had over 200 years to wreck our country. It's time to take it back, and clean up the backyard before we start hanging the welfare sign higher over us.
I Ruby Dhalla the Punjabi Princess set the tone of her bill with a bias slant, you don't support it you are a racists against nonwhites.
For years, the pundits have told us that we 'need' all of these immigrants (over 250,000 per year), in order to keep the pension system solvent. With this actuarial time-bomb, THAT façade's finally fallen off.
The REAL reason, aside from ethic vote-trolling, is to keep the real estate, construction and banking sectors in warm bodies. In order to justify housing and associated infrastructure (roads, schools) construction, the immigration system keeps bulk-importing people...like Dr Dhalla's constituents. Urban sprawl, loss of natural areas and farmland (and, hence, higher food prices), and stress on freshwater supplies all ensue. Other than political correctness, the 'environmentalists' don't talk about this, because of philanthropic payolla. The David Suzuki Foundation gets most of its funding from RBC and BMO-Financial, who've lobbied for DOUBLING immigration volumes (more people = more mortgages).
I have been in the military for 22yrs and thinking of retiring in 3yrs, with 25yrs of service, I'm entitle of 50% of my salary, I have sacrafice my life 3 times in Afghanistan. What have they done??? What kinda world or Country are we in????. Incroyable!!!
Okay doesn't this beg the question.......Why in the name of God are we letting in 62yr old immigrants in the first place!!!!!!!!
As previously stated, lowering the residency time required from 10 to 3 years will enable one to receive only $38.00 monthly of Old Age Security (OAS) - however they would also be entitled to receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) of up to AN ADDITIONAL $1,131.47 per month TAX-FREE ! Our current OAS policy grants more disposable income benefits to a Canadian resident of 10 years as compared to a life-long Canadian living in Canada for 40 years - and now Dhalla wants to reduce it to only 3 years and they too would receive more benefits than life-long Canadians.
A more pressing issue with the OAS is a fact that the latest average payment of the OAS is 95% of the maximum monthly payment of $516.96 or $489.52 while the average monthly payments to widows and widowers is only 43% of the maximum monthly allowance of $1,050.68 or $451.71 monthly. Why such a disparity?
This from a woman that didn't pay her employees. Gets her in the news and that's the main reason. Another Liberal get vote at any cost idea. Sorry, I have had enough of the Liberals for the rest of my life and only 6 years ago I supported them. They say most people will wake up and I did.
This is the same Liberal Party who parachuted Michael Ignatieff, a nobody who contributed $0 taxes to Canada over 30 years, and who will be eligible for an MP for life-time guaranteed, indexed pension after only 6 years.
It's all about them and their own special-entitled-inner circle/club. But everyone else gets to pay for those entitlements.
I'll have to read Dhalla's private member's bill. If I am correct, we are currently eligible for a 1/40 of the OAS for every year we live in Canada. I have no problem giving someone 3/40 of a pension if they have lived in Canada legally for only three years.
I disagree with those who think these 3 year recipients would not receive full pension. From the OAS perhaps not, but as others pointed out, the guaranteed supplement they would then qualify for is tax free and will top up the pension to the same amount as any other recipient. This bill must not pass. In fact, I think Dhalla should be declared personna non grata and sent back to India for even having the gall to table such non-sense. It is an insult to every Canadian who ever worked and contributed to the system.
I worked with a gentleman from India 3 years ago who was 65 he was telling me that he would be eligible for OAS after working 10 years and his wife who never worked a day would be eligible through him.
He worked as little as possible so he would not have to pay tax on the money he earned.
I told him in my opinion he shouldn’t receive a pension after 10 yrs his reply to me was “you know how many Indian MP’s there are?”
He told me he was already receiving a full pension from India 1,500 per month plus OAS he would have more money than when he was working.
As soon as he got his OAS he moved back to India, he comes to Canada once a year to have his knee's (which were replaced in Canada) checked. So not only does he get money he does not need, he doesn't spend a dime of it in Canada... And our government is ok with this?
I worked with a gentleman from India 3 years ago who was 65 he was telling me that he would be eligible for OAS after working 10 years and his wife who never worked a day would be eligible through him.
He worked as little as possible so he would not have to pay tax on the money he earned.
I told him in my opinion he shouldn’t receive a pension after 10 yrs his reply to me was “you know how many Indian MP’s there are?”
He told me he was already receiving a full pension from India 1,500 per month plus OAS he would have more money than when he was working.
As soon as he got his OAS he moved back to India, he comes to Canada once a year to have his knee's (which were replaced in Canada) checked. So not only does he get money he does not need, he doesn't spend a dime of it in Canada... And our government is ok with this?
Are you @#$#$^# Kidding,our retired seniors now can,t afford to live and we are taking canadian paid into pensions for immigrants.I worked for 45 years to get my pension1 and we will be damned if we let this pass.get of your fat asses you good for nothing politicans,and do something about this.
Ruby Dhalla bill c-428 is a kick in the face to canadians that has worked all their life paying in to the pension plan and then immirgrats seniors can come over and get canada pension after 3 years. This is a very wrong bill to pass and I myself oppose this bill passing. Are government has become very week minded in standing up for our own canadian citizens they cater to immigrants more so, our government needs to quit walking around with their tail between their legs and grow some balls.
We 1st have to stop the politicians from filling there pockets
We need politicians like Tooy Douglas
We 1st have to stop the politicians from filling there pockets
We need politicians like Tomy Douglas
Stop for a second. Now face the facts, who cares what we think. Every time gas goes up we shut up, taxes go up we shut up, etc. Politicians are getting bribed and most of them make a killing salary to start of with, they work a few years get a lump some to leave thet they retire with a SICK retirement plan, and we shut up, so then lets just shut up and accept it like the slaves we are. Let me tell you something, They can raise gas to $2.00 dollars tomorrow even if the barrel is very low. They can crash two planes in buildings and kill thousands and call we close our eyes (read about the facts all over then net, insurance etc etc). BP oil spill, OMG has anyone ever wondered what happened to all that oil, they only picked up a fraction. Look up who owned and sold all land around the oil fields just before the explosion. Look to see how many bas**rds made millions due to these incidents. And if someone just said "well that's just not possible" OH RIGHT THEY MUST HAVE A CRYSTAL BALL (to sell all those stocks just before great disasters..... Look at our Premier and the scandals, and we just shut up. Every now and then "The Journal the Montreal" Uncovers some scandals, and we think, OMG someone has to do something about this. You got to bed that night and guess what, next day when you wake up, who gives a f**k anymore, NEXT STORYYYYYY, maybe about Britney fu**en Spears, lol. WE ARE PUPPETS AND SLAVES --- SO LETS ACT LIKE THEM.
East Indians were used by commonwealth as slaves for sugar industry,many died and families separated just like blacks ,so yes Indians and blacks 65 years old should get same pension no waiting time at all
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