Which seniors’ priorities will make their way into the House of Commons during the current Parliamentary session depends not on the Liberals, but on the opposition parties.
As Parliament resumes and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his MPs embark on their third mandate, what will really determine what ends up on their legislative agenda are the vagaries of their minority position.
“When you have a minority government, electoral promises are less likely to be fulfilled than when you have a majority government,” says Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and James McGill professor in the department of political science at McGill University.
Béland has looked at the 2015 Liberal promises to see if they were fulfilled by 2019 and discovered that they had fulfilled or partially fulfilled “a large majority of their promises,” though he says people tend to remember the few they broke, such as the one on electoral reform. Between 2019 and 2021, the pandemic hijacked the agenda and, given that there was also a minority government, fewer promises were met in those two years.
He notes that the Liberals were proactive on seniors issues, including reversing the plan to raise the age of eligibility for Old Age Security, for example. They also expanded the Canada Pension Plan, which was part of their platform, although there are gaps and loopholes in the CPP expansion so far.
Of the issues Federal Retirees raised in its advocacy during the election, namely, long-term care, veterans’ issues, pharmacare and pensions, pharmacare is the most neglected of the bunch, meriting just two mentions in the platform.
“I think pharmacare is the poor cousin here, or the neglected child,” Béland says.
Another challenge for the Liberals will be the intergovernmental relationships with the provinces, which are implicated in many of these policy issues. It’s not just for the House of Commons to deal with, it’s also how this government will be focused on working with provincial partners on these things, making the intergovernmental file incredibly important.
Long-term care
There’s no question that the pandemic has made long-term care an issue no Canadian, and therefore no politician, can or will ignore any longer. The question is, where does it fit in the overall agenda?
Susan Braedley, associate professor of social work at Carleton University, says national standards for long-term care are coming.
“We know it’s underway, but it’s very difficult and controversial work, where there are a lot of tensions between dealing with health-care safety issues that have come up in COVID-19 and providing environments that are warm and welcoming places to live and work,” Braedley says. “Addressing those tensions is what’s going on [now], but I do believe we will have national standards developed by the federal government and hopefully there will be some good ones.”
Braedley says there are several expert panels working on this and she’s seen drafts of some of the recommendations.
“They seem to be working quickly,” she says. “When [we’ll have them], I couldn’t say, but I know the work is well underway and proceeding with some urgency. I’ve been encouraged by what I’ve seen. I’ve spent hundreds of days in long-term care homes across Canada and in Europe and the U.S. and I’ve worked with a large international team so we’ve had a lot of time to compare and think through [what] these standards should be.”
Braedley points to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ series of booklets about “promising practices” in long-term care, on which she has worked. Most of the ideas in the booklets fall under provincial jurisdiction, but the federal government could develop a long-term care act. She thinks having a long-term care act makes sense at the federal level as a guarantee, and that the national standards could be tucked into that act to ensure a decent standard of long-term care is provided to people across the country.
Federal Retirees has been requesting "enforceable" standards, but Braedley points out that the enforceable standards the provinces had didn't do much good.
“I’m not hearing that [a long-term care act] is going to happen, but things have been talked about,” she says.
On home care, the Liberals have said they want to support older people to age in their own homes.
“They want to double the home accessibility credit to make staying at home more [feasible],” Béland says. Of course, benefiting from that requires one to own a home, and to have the means to spend on considerable renovations to qualify. “They also started a discussion about an aging-at-home benefit. There’s talk about studies, developing a long-term care act, developing an aging-at-home benefit, but again it’s a bit vague.”
One issue with the Liberals’ funding commitments on home care, however, is how much accountability there will be for how this money gets spent when it makes it to the provinces.
Pensions
The OAS increase for people aged 75 and older took place, and was kicked off in the weeks before the writ dropped with a one-time payment of $500 for seniors who will be 75 and over as of June 30, 2022. In July 2022, the Old Age Security (OAS) pension will increase by 10 per cent for seniors 75 and over. The Liberals also restored the age of eligibility for OAS and the guaranteed income supplement (GIS) from 67 to 65 and increased the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) by 10 per cent for seniors.
When the Liberals announced the OAS increase would be for those aged 75 and over, opposition parties complained they were creating two tiers of seniors, so now seniors will see an increase in GIS of $500 for singles and $750 for couples, starting at age 65. It’s a position Federal Retirees also supported. The Liberals also promised to increase the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) survivors benefit by 25 per cent and expand the Canada Caregiver Credit into a refundable tax-free benefit, allowing caregivers to receive up to $1,250 a year.
“We’ll see if the Bloc can pressure the Liberals to maybe expand the permanent increase in OAS to people aged 65 and over,” Béland says.
When it comes to looming debt repayment and whether that might affect federal retirees’ pensions, University of Toronto economics professor Michael Smart says the short answer is no.
“It’s natural for people to worry about, but my main message is that we don’t have to worry about the debt,” he said. “The government did what was necessary to insulate workers from this terrible shock and the lockdowns, and we went into the pandemic with a very good balance sheet federally. We’re going to come out with a lot more debt on that balance sheet, but federal finances are still in a sustainable position.”
While some say federal retirees might not have to worry about their pensions from an economic perspective, there are also the ideological and political perspectives to consider. Federal public sector compensation, pensions and benefits are the targets of deficit hawks who regularly call for the lowest common denominator for all Canadians, especially when it comes to pensions and retirement security. While the debt may be economically sustainable, whether government spending on compensation is politically sustainable is the real question.
Pharmacare
After the Hoskins Report on pharmacare was released, a national drug care plan had some momentum, but the pandemic soon took over as a health priority.
When Maclean’s asked Trudeau about pharmacare on the campaign trail, he said, “We continue to be committed to national universal pharmacare [but] over the past year-and-a-half, as we’ve been working on various challenges and priorities, the pandemic ended up taking a lot of time and space.”
Marc-André Gagnon, an associate professor of public policy at Carleton University and an expert on the file, says the Liberals can also sit back and profess to have done their part. They did present a proposal to the provinces, yet only Prince Edward Island responded that it was interested. Other provinces, Gagnon says, have complained about the federal government encroaching on their jurisdictions. The federal government has also said it won’t force provinces to enrol.
“What they are offering is very interesting [in that it’s] recommendations from the Hoskins report — universal drug coverage for all Canadians,” Gagnon says.
“The thing is, when it was put forward, we thought there would be significant money being offered,” he says. “But the proposal is on the table and there’s no real money to back up this plan and there’s no one championing it [provincially.]”
Veterans issues
Béland notes that the Liberal platform had much to say on veterans in relation to housing and homelessness. “The pandemic is making these issues even more important,” Béland says. “There was a motion adopted a while back about ending veteran homelessness by 2025, but this will require a lot of investments.”
Other issues touched upon in the platform include employment strategies for veterans and reducing wait times.
“There’s quite a lot about veterans in the platform, but will they be a priority in the legislative process? That’s another question,” Béland says. “It will depend not just on the Liberals, but the opposition parties.”
Maya Eichler, an associate professor in political and Canadian studies and women’s studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, agrees that homelessness is one veteran-related issue that’s on people’s minds.
Homelessness, she says, goes hand and hand with military sexual trauma and women’s lack of family support — many are single or are in dual-service families and they often have less family support than their male peers have.
“I think it’s something to pay attention to,” Eichler says. “Women are the fastest growing subgroup of homeless veterans.”
Eichler notes that the Liberals have promised a national veterans’ employment strategy, another positive step as women veterans face a steeper decline in income after they leave the forces. But she says these programs are often created with an image of a particular veteran in mind — usually a male combat veteran.
The Liberal promise to reduce wait times also has inequities that haven’t been resolved, Eichler says. “But those files are more complex and more complicated to adjudicate,” she says.
“They don’t fit the typical mould, so adjudicators aren’t as well trained in them. Some of that is getting better with the [incidence of] military sexual trauma.”
And on the issue of military sexual trauma, in addition to the Arbour investigation into military sexual misconduct, a nationally funded fully bilingual peer-to-peer support program was expected by now.
Finally, the platform talked about creating a national institute on women’s health, specifically to address clinical, occupational and deployment needs.
“One of the focus areas will be the health of military women, which will have a lot of impact, but it should be extended to veterans now,” she says. “Historically, we haven’t had enough research on women veterans’ health. That one I was quite excited about.”
Environment
The oil and gas sector is also responsible for 25 per cent of Canada’s emissions.
The Liberals have also committed to eliminating fossil fuel subsidies.