|
In October 2006 a meeting was held on Parliament Hill in Ottawa to welcome Members of Parliament to hear the case of the pension
rights activists.
Over 30 MPs attended and since then even more have expressed interest in hearing the case.
Here is the background paper that I prepared for this conference.
Thank you to Dan Braniff and Bernie Dussault for inviting me to be part of this panel.
I am not a senior but I support pension splitting.
I teach school in Calgary but for many years was home to take care of our four children. As soon as I left teaching,
my husband and I noticed our income was suddenly half. We had lost dental, pension, child rearing and employment benefits.
Our tax rate however was not reduced to recognize this loss of income. We started to also incur what has been called the
single income tax penalty. We were poorer because I was taking care of the kids, and then penalized for my choice.
It was quite a shock and for me an insult. I was working longer hours than ever with no technical weekends or evenings
off. It was what I loved. I was raising the next generation, giving myself 100% to making sure they turned out well. But
I didn’t like the penalty. I complained to the human rights commission, the attorney general, the minister of finance,
ultimately to the UN.
We have not yet succeeded in changing tax law for those in my situation back then. But I am affiliated with organizations
working on that goal now -homeschoolers, parents with home-based offices, telecommuters, tag-team parents, parents who use
grandma care or care by neighbors, as well as dads or moms at home. Last year we held 17 rallies across the country to protest
tax discrimination and days after our national rally the government fell.
So we are out there, and trying.
We have been patient and we will be. But I am concerned for those for whom the issue is more urgent. Seniors who were
caregivers not only paid the penalty I paid, but they are paying it for the rest of their lives, in the pension plan. They
will be poorer for life, because they were home to take care of the kids. I don’t think that’s fair.
I urge government to listen to the 2 million seniors represented here today and permit those who want to, to split their
pensions and pay a lower tax.
I urge pension splitting for five reasons.
First for the dignity of seniors.
The cost of living has gone up faster than their savings. My dad told me he used to be able to buy a full dinner for a
quarter. A generation that squirreled away retirement savings based on cost of living in the 80s must be shocked to see the
cost of housing and gas now. In Calgary the property tax bill has gone so high that those on pensions of $20,000 have staged
a revolt. Nursing home fees have gone up $7 a day in Ontario while pensions went up only $1 a day. Drug costs are up and
not all drugs are covered by health insurance. Many retirement benefit plans have cut back dental and medical coverage.
Even palliative care costs more, in Calgary being $26 a day and funerals cost more, and charge GST.
Seniors still live in our world. They are not exempt from utility bill increases or school taxes. Many also take care
of grandchildren because the parents cannot, and there is little financial recognition of those costs. .
Many seniors find they have not saved enough.
The Alberta Council on Aging found that half of my province’s seniors live on under $17,000 a year.
This new poverty for seniors should be seen as a national disgrace. This is the generation that suffered casualties to
defend Canada.. My dad rode the rails in the depression and from the experience of national upheavals and poverty this is
the generation that set up social programs to prevent such crises again. They created unemployment insurance, spousal deductions,
maternity benefits and more financial rights for women Is poverty a fitting long-term penalty for what they gave us?
Many seniors spent their lives sacrificing comfort to build a stronger home, to nurture children, to provide support for
each other. They continue to do the volunteer work that keeps the economy afloat, driving cancer patients to hospital, delivering
meals on wheels, visiting the dying, manning the food banks. Their work is as unpaid as ever. But we still depend on it.
When I was little my dad used to drive us to Edmonton to see my grandma. Nanny was widowed young, shortly before I was
born, and all the time that I knew her, lived in a tiny house and was on a small pension. We all gathered at her house for
big turkey dinners and her signature pies, family in every room in the house propped on chairs and on beds eating, singing
and enjoying what she had prepared . It never once occurred to me that she had to buy the groceries for that meal, that she
on her pension had to pay property tax and utilities.
I think that all younger generations live in a kind of blissful oblivion of the poverty of seniors. It is the final proof
really that we were loved – we were sheltered from some realities then and we like to ignore them still. We must
grow up.
Second, I urge pension splitting to keep promises
.We are not the first to notice this problem. It has been noticed for nearly a hundred years but never acted on. In
1907 Sir Richard Cartwright in the House of Commons suggested that any women homemakers who wanted should be able to join
the pension plan.
In 1985 Ottawa studied homemaker pensions. The Mulroney government promised them. The Quebec government promised them
.
Today’s seniors are not asking for salary. They are not even asking for pensions for homemakers. They are only
asking to split and therefore pay less tax on the one pension they do get. They are not asking for much.
Third I urge pension splitting to be consistent with other laws that suggest it.
Right now tax law has two faces. On the one hand, it requires us when we pay tax to pretend we do not share income.
But when it returns benefits to us, it requires that we do share, and needs us to declare household income before we
get money back. .
We need to permit pension splitting to be consistent with the assumptions of the GST rebate, the CCED or the CPP that
people do share income.
We should also consider pension splitting because the household not the individual is the tax base in many countries,
including the US. If they thought it was fair, we need to look at it too.
Fourth I urge pension splitting to be accurate.
A fundamental tax principle is to base tax on ability to pay. Many households of married couples, siblings, friends,
or unmarried couples share income. It is simply a fact. To tax them as if they did not, bases a national policy on being
out of touch with reality.
.In the past tax policy treated the homemaker as a dependent, and yet many couples do not see their relationship as dependency.
They see it as a partnership, interdependency. The state should too.
Today’s seniors made a decision to have one adult at home for a time. Some had no choice. Taking care of others
has been called the job you get for which you did not apply. We are all one car accident, one sudden illness, one phone call
in the night away from suddenly becoming caregivers ourselves. A fair society recognizes those who respond to that call.
Today’s seniors did.
And last and for me vitally important. I urge pension splitting because to deny it harms women. It denies them equality.
Women are the ones who face the most glaring poverty in old age. Why is that? It is precisely because historically women
not men opted out of paid work to be caregivers. Obviously when pensions are based on paid work, it will be women who lose
out.
For me than, we will not have women’s equality by simply ensuring more women earn. That is still an agenda that
tells people how to live.
We will not have women’s equality simply by pay equity on the job, though that is a good goal
We will not have women’s equality by getting men to do more housework or by having national daycare, though
for some couples this is a solution that works.
A fair government gives equality to all women not just those with lifestyles it favors.
We will only advance women’s equality if we recognize the unpaid care work women have always done in the home.
For pensioners today, there is no chance to go back and do over. They made their decision. If we are punishing them for it,
that reflects on us.
Most of us here today who are not seniors are the product of selfless love of people now seniors. How dare us deny credit
to those who gave everything they could to us?
Permit pension splitting.
|
