2010 Budget Choices: Layton makes appeal to give seniors a raise

Next week’s federal budget will make important choices.

The Conservatives are promising more of the failed old policies of the past with a “stay the course” budget with billions in corporate tax giveaways.

Jack Layton and the New Democrats have new ideas to help lift Canada’s seniors out of poverty with improvements to the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS).

Why do seniors need a raise?

Today, Stephen Harper is forcing 1.7 million of Canada’s most impoverished seniors to survive on an income that is $4,000 below the urban poverty line.

The rate of seniors living in poverty has doubled since the mid-1990s.

Meanwhile, Harper’s tax handouts to corporations cost Canada $5.3 billion last year and will cost an estimated $12 billion this year.

Next week’s budget is about choices. There’s a new choice: to halt the growing inequality and lift today’s seniors out of poverty, or the old choice of adding billions more to Harper’s tax giveaways to profitable companies.