News and event information for Williams Lake, BC - as it happens.

Local NDP candidate Michael Crawford is calling on MP Cathy McLeod and the Harper Conservatives to stop the corporate tax giveaways and invest in a pension system that will ensure Canada’s seniors can live with dignity. 

“It would cost $700 million to lift every senior in Canada out of poverty by improving CPP and GIS – a fraction of tax giveaways the Conservatives have given to corporations” said Crawford. “Increasing the CPP is the most cost effective option to lift seniors of poverty, but it would anger the Conservative’s friends in the finance industry”. 

Federal New Democrats are calling for: 

• Increasing the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) to end seniors’s poverty.
• Strengthening the Canada Pension Plan/Quebec Pension Plan, in consultation with the provinces, with a goal of doubling benefits.
• Developing a national pension insurance program, funded by employer pension plans, that will guarantee pensioners up to $2,500/month in the event of bankruptcy and plan failure.
• Creating a national facility to adopt workplace pension plans of companies in bankruptcy or in difficulty and keep them operating on a going-concern basis. 

“According to the Conference Board of Canada, after several decades of reductions, the rate of seniors living in poverty doubled from three percent in the mid-1990s to six percent in the mid-2000s” said Crawford. “This is in part due to failure of successive governments to increase the maximum GIS benefit – a benefit intended for the lowest-income seniors.” 

“Harper’s tax handouts to corporations cost Canada $5.3 billion last year and will cost an estimated $12 billion this year” said Crawford. “Why are the Conservatives spending $12 billion on corporate tax giveaways while they reject Jack Layton’s proposals to lift seniors out of poverty by investing $700 million in CPP and the Guaranteed Income Supplement?”

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