An article in the Toronto Star caught my eye recently. There are many Canadian citizens getting close to the age where they can receive their Old Age Security pension, but because they were born elsewhere, the government's demanding proof of when they arrived.
That's the situation I'm in. I was born in the U.S., but because my parents were Canadian, I had dual Canada/U.S. citizenship from birth. When my parents divorced, my mother brought me to Canada. It was sometime in the 1960s and I'm not sure how old I was at the time.
Not a problem, I thought. I have a government-issued Canadian citizenship card and passport. I've paid taxes since I got my first job in 1977. I've never moved outside Ontario since I came here, and my longest visit to the U.S. was two weeks. But just to be sure, I called the pension office ... and discovered that yes, I have a problem. "You'll need the papers that show when you came into the country," the clerk said.
Now, my mother didn't have the time of day for red tape, and this was back when you didn't have to tell the customs officer much more than where you lived and where you were going. I'm pretty sure I know exactly what she did. She flashed her big baby blues at the officer and said, "We live in Florida, and we're on a vacation to Toronto to visit my parents." And that was the end of it.
Papers? We don't need no steenkeen papers ... except that now, I do. I had the pension office send me a statement of my pension contributions since 1977, but that's not enough. Both of my parents are dead, so I can't get anything there. I'm going to need more paperwork when I start my application twelve years from now. I'm hoping my schools kept records, and I'll be going to them when they reopen in the fall, but if they didn't, I'm not sure what will happen.
The government's trying to save every penny it can, and if it can avoid paying out several thousand pensions, I'm guessing it will. If you came to Canada as a child, and you don't have any documentation, starting looking now.
