OLD AGE PENSIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 61, 14 March 1927, Page 8

OLD AGE PENSIONS

move in Canada

(From Our Own Correspondent.) VANCOUVER, 11th February. British Columbia aims to be the first province in Canada to pay old-age pensions. The Liberal Premier, the Hon. JohuN Oliver, has introduced a measure, providing for a pension of £50 a year, on a residential qualification of 25 years/five years of which must be spent in the' province, applicable to British subjects only whose income does not exceed £75 a year' Ine coat of the pension Vill be shared by the province and the Dominion. The Bill, marks the culmination of a campaign Mr. Oliver has waged throughout Canada ior many years, actuated by the tact that Canada was the only Dominion that did not have an old-age pension. Most of the provinces believe that the federal Government should pay the whole cost of the pension. So does Mr. Oliver but he is going to accept half the loaf, and hope for the future.

An agreement has been entered into -with the authorities at Ottawa, based on a Bill introduced by Mr. Mackenzie King last session, which was defeated in the Senate after passing the House of Commons. Under its provisions, and those of the British Columbia Bill, if a pensioner move from British Columbia, he or she will lose that half of the pension hitherto received here The Dominion, will pay its half to pensioners m any province that passes legislation on similar lines. The conirnencins* age is set at 70.

It is believed that immigration-ivill be aided by the grant of old-age pensions, as it is known that its absence has militated against migrants from Great Britain coming here in large numbers, since the pass,96? ofc jag iM-ag§sJJS!BiQa.l<SE 49-Sriuuat