“This is not a party matter,” said Ian Andexser of Nanaimo, B.C., who heads the Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners. “This is a snub to Canada.”

And across the pond in England, Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale has come to the same conclusion: the government of which he is a member has acted “in very bad faith indeed” toward Canada.

The matter angering both individuals is a British government policy that excludes U.K. pensioners who live mostly in Canada and Australia from receiving the normal pension increases meant to help keep pace with inflation. They are the “frozen pensioners” — and about 137,000 of them live in Canada.

Gale told CBC News the freeze does not apply to British pensioners who retire in the United States.

“You can literally have two people living on opposite sides of the Niagara Falls, one in the United States, getting the United Kingdom pension uprated annually, the other living in Canada, having their pension frozen at the point of departure from the United Kingdom,” said Gale.

“And of course, over many years, that means that the value of that pension depreciates dramatically. There are a lot of pensioners, U.K. citizens, living overseas in Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries particularly, who are living in genteel poverty. Or they’re having to be supported by the host country, which I would regard as wholly immoral.”

Anne Puckridge, born in British India in 1925, said she doesn’t even like to look at her British pension statements. “It makes me angry,” she said.

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