Project Title: Addressing Poverty and Service Access Issues for Chinese Canadian Seniors in Toronto: Building Community Capacity for Action

This project focuses on poverty and income security issues among immigrant seniors. This joint initiative is a collaborative effort of the Immigrant Seniors Advocacy Network comprised of the Alternative Planning Group (APG) partners, the Old Age Benefits Forum and other seniors groups. The Alternative Planning Group is comprised of the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTO), African Canadian Development Social Council (ACDSC), Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), and the Hispanic Development Council (HDC).

The target population is the adult and senior population (aged 55 and over) in four ethno-racial communities. One of the project objectives is that we want to ensure income security and an adequate standard of living for seniors from ethnic minority population.

Objectives:

Engage seniors from the Chinese, South Asian, Hispanic and African communities to discuss and identify factors contributing to the poverty and social exclusion;
Address the issues of senior poverty, lack of participation, and equitable access to services to preserve the human dignity of minority seniors through advocacy and other proactive work on their income security in their old age;
Develop an advocacy program to push for proactive measures that would enable immigrant adults to make better personal contributions to pension programs before they turn 65, and to push for changes to Canada’s Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement programs to support the attainment of minimum old age security incomes for immigrant racial minority seniors that are comparable to those of their non-immigrant counterparts;
Ensure that policy-makers recognize the diversity of the senior population and address the immigrant seniors’ needs in general and those in the African, Chinese, Hispanic and South Asian communities;

Long-term Goals:

To facilitate a review of Canada’s social security eligibility criteria, using an immigrant racial minority equity lens. Through the advocacy work that this project would initiate, it is hoped that such a review would lead to changes to the eligibility criteria that enables immigrant racial minority seniors to benefit equally from the income security safety net that is available to all other seniors.
To foster the civic engagement of immigrant racial minority seniors in matters affecting their well-being, including involvement in advocacy work to promote greater service access through more linguistically and culturally-appropriate seniors service delivery.

Update:

Over 10,000 petitions have beed delivered to the House of Commons calling upon the Government of Canada to:
1) Amend the Old Age Security Act, Regulations and Policies to eleiminate the 10 year residency requirement for the OAS and GIS.
2) Work with Provincial Governments to waive the enforcement of sponsorship obligations through government cost-recovery schemes as a condition of financial support in situation of genuine immigration sponsorship breakdown involving a senior.
3) Establish a nominal public transit charge for all seniors in Canada, similar to the nominal $45/year chared to seniors in British Columbia
4)Provide government funding to support more ethnospecific, affordable housing for seniors who need or desire it.

We are currently supporting Bill C-362 - An Act to Amend the Old Age Security Act. This bill seeks to reduce the residency requirement from 10 years to 3 years for immigrant to access Old Age Security Benefits.