Canada: THE PARLIAMENT: For the Aged

After a total of seven days of debate, the House of Commons passed a liberalized Old Age Pensions bill last week. Chief changes:

¶ The basic old age pension rate is raised 20%—from $25 to $30 a month. (To be eligible, a person must be 70 years old, have lived in Canada at least 20 years.)

¶ The amount of outside income allowed a single pensioner is raised from $125 to $240 a year. This clause will add 60,000 names to the present list of 209,000 pensioners.

¶ The eligible age of blind pensioners is lowered from 40 to 21. There were 7,311 Canadians who got blind pensions last year; now there will be 1,700 more.

There is one catch: the bill will not become effective until the nine provinces, which may add pension payments of their own, work out the details with the Dominion. Then the new legislation will cost Canadian taxpayers an estimated $65,500,000 a year in Dominion taxes (a $20,000,000 increase). But in the House, the only real opposition had come from members who thought that the Government was too stingy.