Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Room 309-S, Centre Block
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

Dear Prime Minister:

Low income seniors who need the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) are not receiving the benefit because of flaws in the federal delivery of the program. In 2002, the federal government identified that more than 134,000 Canadians were eligible for the GIS, but were not receiving the benefit. In my home province of Prince Edward Island, as many as 450 seniors were identified as eligible non-recipients.

These numbers, however, represent only those eligible tax filing seniors who are not receiving assistance. Seniors who, for any number of reasons, do not file income tax returns, continue to be missed by the federal government. Seniors who do not file income tax returns may be completely unaware of the Supplement’s existence and the government seems to have no way of directly contacting them to ensure that they receive their entitled assistance.

I am concerned that seniors who do not apply or fail to file income tax returns may be the ones who are most in need. They may lack the ability to complete the application form, be socially isolated or simply not aware that they are eligible.

The federal government goes to great lengths to make sure that Canadians pay their taxes, and they should work just as hard to ensure that low income seniors are receiving the benefits to which they are entitled.

Canadian parliamentarians approved the GIS because they believed it was necessary assistance for low-income seniors. The public service, however, has failed to deliver the benefits for seniors that were mandated. The former Department of Human Resources Development responded to this problem by outreach measures, but the limited success of their efforts is that today the government cannot even confirm, with any certainty, the number of eligible non-recipients in Canada. I believe that officials at senior levels of the bureaucracy are failing to take the action needed to identify and assist those seniors the benefit is supposed to help.

I hope that your government will request a more urgent and pressing response from the department so that priority is given to solving this major problem.

Sincerely,

Percy Downe
Senator