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Niagara Falls
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Letter: Sorry, PM did break promise to seniors

Dear editor:

The election is over but this is in response to a letter from Elizabeth Oliver-Malone (“Claims against PM Justin Trudeau were false) saying the details in my Sept. 9 letter were wrong, (“More promises to be broken on seniors benefits”).

While I feel she is taking poetic licence and playing fast and loose with the truth in her interpretation, I do, however, respect her passion in attempting to defend the indefensible .

She said the recent $500 payout was an interim payment against the now-rescheduled OAS and CPP increases in July 2022.

This one-time, paltry taxable amount is just more political puffery to deflect from the real facts. Respectfully, it is completely false and unrelated to any promises made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his campaign stump speech in 2019 in New Brunswick.

It was simply an 11th-hour pitch made on Aug. 13, 2021, to attract seniors' votes. It came from Deb Schulte, the minister for seniors. It is similar to his pandering to the Quebec Liberal vote by offering $6 billion in child care support – to a province with the premier child care program in Canada and one that did not request the money.

Furthermore , allow me to address the true facts of his 2019 New Brunswick speech as reported by Kathleen Harris of the CBC News on September 18th , 2019 .Several other national news media outlets reported on his promises .

On Sept. 18, 2019, in Fredericton, Trudeau promised a 10 per cent Old Age Security (OAS ) boost at age 75 and a 25 per cent increase to the Canada Pension Plan ( CPP ) for widows. These were to take effect in July 2020 “and would be indexed to keep up with inflation.”

Trudeau's promises were never implemented in July 2020, another of his hollow promises and absolutely false. Therefore, the facts I mentioned were not wrong.

In this instance the PM's team decided to spin the 2019 promises, repackage them for their 2021 campaign and change the implementation date to July 2022 from July 2020, a full two years later. In my opinion just another pack of lies.

Samuel Young

NOTL

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