VisionTV Presents
PENSIONER POWER
World Premiere: Monday, August 31 at 10pm ET

VisionTV Executive Producer and CARP President Moses Znaimer announces the world premiere of Pensioner Power: a groundbreaking documentary from award-winning filmmaker Martin Himel that explores senior political clout around the world including Israel, Slovenia, Croatia and Canada. VisionTV will broadcast Pensioner Power on Monday, August 31 at 10pm ET.

As President of CARP, Moses leads Canada’s largest non-partisan, non-profit, membership-based Advocacy Association working to protect the rights of Canadians as we age.

Since 2008 Moses has met with and observed the activities of other like-minded organizations in the USA, Italy, Denmark, The Netherlands & India. During this process, Moses learned about the Israeli Pensioner Party, a political party elected to the Israeli Parliament based on a pension reform platform. The party founders’ belief was that to effect political change, you required real executive power; a Ministry.

“I’m often asked why CARP, with our 300,000+ members and network of 60 chapters across Canada, doesn’t form its own political party? I commissioned this documentary because I was curious to know about the experience of actually creating and sustaining a party in an actual election. I wanted to understand what it was about the Israeli political system that could not only give such an apparently fringe group a chance, but a taste of real influence,” said Moses.

Today, pension improvement remains one of CARP’s top priorities, and the Ontario Pension Plan is emerging as an issue in the current Federal election. Over the course of the campaign, CARP will lead “Seniors Vote/ Le Vote des Aînés”, a collection of 50 seniors’ organizations across Canada who demand action on improvements to the Canada Pension Plan, retirement security, and health care. The coalition has also launched “Get Out the Vote”, an initiative to encourage older Canadians to bring 2-3 others to the polls this October.

“Pensioner Power presents a compelling debate on the effectiveness of a pensioner lobby versus a pensioner party,” said Susan Eng, Executive Vice President of CARP. “I hope that viewers will note how our approach has contributed to CARP’s success in achieving political change to benefit all Canadians.”

In conjunction with the documentary, VisionTV has created a Pensioner Power digital site available at: http://visiontv.ca/pensioner-power

Content includes links to CARP for policy and membership information, video, photo galleries, and a Twitter and Facebook hub that allows users to view all social media posts from @CARP, the federal and provincial governments, and special interest groups in one place at one time, as well as to engage and comment.