Almost 90,000 seniors facing Guaranteed Income Supplement cut for accepting pandemic benefits

Almost 90,000 Canadian seniors are being hit by a sudden cut to their monthly income because they accepted a federal financial benefit that was supposed to help them weather the pandemic.

Low income seniors who received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) are seeing their Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) payments clawed back as a result.

GIS is intended to help low income seniors make ends meet. The payments are based on income. A single senior earning less than $19,248 qualifies for GIS. The cutoff for couples can be as high as $46,128, depending on their pension situation.

In 2021, the maximum monthly payment under the program is $948.82. 

Janet McLeod, who turns 79 next month, is one of many low income seniors who work part time to support themselves while receiving GIS.

McLeod, who previously received about $300 a month through the program, said she was told in July that because she accepted several payments of the $2,000 monthly CERB — which is taxable income — all her GIS payments for this year would be cancelled.

"I am in a perpetual struggle," she said. "So to be cut back $300 a month is very difficult, paying rent and taking care of my other expenses, which are very modest."

The Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), which McLeod did not collect, is also counted as income when applying for the GIS.

McLeod has a small business helping students get post-secondary placements. She said that before the pandemic, almost all of her business was conducted face to face; COVID-19 left her without an adequate income, so she applied for the CERB.

By the fall of 2020, she said, she had adapted her business model to remote work and stopped collecting CERB payments. 

"When I did my taxes in April of 2021 for the year of 2020, GIS came back to me in early July and told me, 'You earn too much, you don't qualify for GIS,'" she said.

"Those of us who are getting GIS are on the low end of earned income. Seniors can't project that they are going to make a lot of money, but they still want to make a contribution and work as long as we can. You're cutting back on us, those who are least able to afford it."

Scott Bardsley, spokesperson for Minister of Seniors Kamal Khera, said that "because GIS benefits are generally reduced by $1 for every $2 of net income, affected seniors would have received more in CERB or CRB than they lost in GIS."

Bardsley said that McLeod and others like her can ask the federal government to consider their case by estimating what they'll earn this year and using that figure to calculate GIS.