OTTAWA – While opposition parties are asking the Trudeau Liberals to extend their $250 “tax holiday” relief payments to non-working seniors, some members of the government caucus say they’ve already done plenty to help older Canadians.
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Speaking to reporters outside of the Liberals’ weekly morning caucus meeting on Wednesday, Tourism Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada said seniors are already benefiting from existing government programs, and the cheques are intended to help those in the workforce.
“We’ve done a great deal for seniors, and we’ll continue to work hard to protect vulnerable people,” Ferrada said in French. “The $250 cheque is to support people who are working.”
Ferrada dodged questions about seniors enduring the ongoing affordability crisis, repeating that the cheques are solely intended for those who earned wages in 2023.
“The legislation introduced last week is a GST holiday,” she said when a reporter directly asked, “What about seniors?”
“It’s a measure that will help workers,” Ferrada said.
When asked if specifically excluding seniors would cause unrest in the Liberal caucus, Ferrada again dodged the question by invoking the Conservatives.
“We always have good conversations in caucus, and people in our caucus – contrary to the Conservatives caucus, they can say whatever they want to say – it’s a conversation we’ll have in caucus.”
Since announcing their $6 billion “GST holiday” plans last week, the Liberals have maintained the plan is there to help working people weather the ongoing affordability crisis.
As well, the Trudeau Liberals are promising to send $250 cheques in the spring to Canadians who earned up to $150,000 in 2023.
But both the Bloc and NDP are urging the government to include seniors in their plan, making it a condition of their support.
“Before today’s workers, other workers came before them – workers who worked all their lives, who paid taxes all their lives, and have no other option,” Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said during Tuesday’s question period.
“The government is giving cheques to people who don’t need them, and the government is not giving cheques to those who need them the most.”
LIberal MP Marcus Powlowski said it would be great to cut $250 cheques to every Canadian who needs it, but it just isn’t feasible.
“Ideally, it would be nice to give $250 to everybody, and I can certainly sympathize with seniors who say, ‘Why aren’t we getting it,’” he said Wednesday. “It would be nice to give it to them, whether it’s affordable, that’s the big question.”
When asked about the affordability of giving relief cheques to those who made six-figure salaries while leaving impoverished seniors with nothing, Powlowski said the issue is more about fairness than affordability.
“It’s a tax break for people who make higher amounts of money. A brief tax break, but it’s a tax break,” he said. “At the end of the day, you pay so much in taxes, you get so much back, and you’re getting a little more back from the government.”
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