CanAge - seniors’ other advocacy organization

In 2018, lawyer Laura Tamblyn Watts was one of two Vice Presidents of Advocacy at CARP. I emailed her three times about the vicious GIS clawback rate, as much as 76%. On the third email, which had a tone of

“Two thirds of low-income seniors are women. You don’t care about women.”

she finally responded appropriately. Her fellow Vice President, a female accountant, asked for clarification because the GIS tables on the GIS website are so complex. Then I was invited to a CARP press conference announcing their FACES program. FACES had five components related to advocacy. One component was to advocate to the government to reduce the vicious GIS clawback rate of as much as 76%.

When I entered CARP headquarters, Ms. Watts immediately shoved the page on the FACES document that addressed the GIS clawback in my face, saying “See. Here is what we did because of your findings.” The contents of this page would eventually convince Mr. Morneau to reduce the clawback rate, which he did in his 2019 Budget, thereby giving low-income seniors $440 million more in GIS payments per year.

What a team Ms. Watts and I were. We proved that:

  • advocacy can work,

  • CARP has immense power in influencing politicians and

  • politicians need a financial watchdog or they will secretly impose huge injustice on Canadians if they can. (While working seniors thought they were earning, for example, $16 per hour, they were really netting as little as $4 per hour.)

In 2019, Ms. Watts left CARP and started CanAge, a second advocacy group for seniors. The CanAge website states

Our mission is to advance the rights and wellbeing of Canadians as we age.

Regrettably, the Economic Security for Seniors section of the CanAge website only deals with middle-income seniors who have RRIF’s, RRSP’s, TFSA’s or are members or a pension plan other than the CPP. There is no mention of the CPP and no help for those two million of six million seniors who live near the poverty line.

I have attempted to contact Ms. Watt, my teammate regarding the GIS, several times. She never responded, even though the CPP owes three million seniors $44 billion.

This is the suspicious behaviour of someone who has received considerable donations to never mention the CPP. Their currently substantial organization suddenly emerged out of nowhere. Is it possible the tentacles of the TFI have also reached Ms. Watts and CanAge?