A grass-roots movement to try to create federal changes to help low-income seniors is taking its next step here in Kamloops.

The Seniors Tin Cup movement, organized by seniors and supporters in cities around BC, has been able to get their formal petition granted by Ottawa.

Kamloops organizer Celeste Fummerton says they’re now going to begin collecting signatures to demand change.

“We want to get a lot of people to sign this so that the government will really wake up and pay attention to the plight of seniors, lots of whom who rely on CPP, Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement usually make about $7,000 less than the poverty level in Canada, which is $25,252,” said Fummerton.

She says if they do get Ottawa to make changes, it’s her expectation the top-up to senior’s incomes would be “targeted.”

“I think it will probably have to come through the Guaranteed Income Supplement, because that way people that don’t need it won’t get it,” noted Fummerton.  “There are some seniors in BC that are doing very, very well, that have good company pensions and whatnot. We’re really trying to really target the seniors that are living below the poverty level.”

The group now has 120 days to collect the signatures needed to have the formal petition put before Parliament, via MP Frank Caputo.

Fummerton suggests change needs to come quickly.

“There was an elderly woman who was so happy that we were doing this because she said she had to pay her gas bill, and she had no money for groceries,” recalled Fummerton from a recent Tin Cup rally on the North Shore. “I looked in her bag as she was talking to me and she had some celery and a loaf of bread.”

Fummerton and her group will begin collecting signatures Saturday at Valley Markets at the Sahali Mall, with expectations they will be at various community events in Kamloops over the course of the next few months.