Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for joining us. I won't have time to put questions to all of the witnesses. However, Ms. Kirk, I do understand your concerns about the community and volunteer sector, because I'm familiar with this environment. I do understand and very much agree with your recommendations.
I have a question for Mr. Dudding. You talk about child poverty, a determining factor in a child's future. To my mind, poverty is a determining factor in the future and health of the global community. I'd like to share with you some of the recommendations we have made to government and to ask you if you believe they can help in the fight against poverty. We ask our constituents to give us some feedback, but we don't always know what people in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta are thinking. The witnesses here today represent a cross-section of Canadian society and perhaps they can tell us if we're on the right path.
In Bill C-269 on employment insurance, we ask that the qualifying period be set at 360 hours of work, regardless of the regional unemployment rate, that the benefit period be extended, that the weekly benefit rate be increased to 60 per cent and that the waiting period be eliminated.
These are just a few of the changes we are seeking. We're also asking that CMHC's $4.2 billion surplus be reinvested in affordable and special needs housing initiatives. We also want the $3.2 billion owed to those seniors who were unaware of their right to collect the Guaranteed Income Supplement to be paid to them, because they are among the poorest in our society. We also want the application process to be automated, so that once seniors have initially applied for the GIS, they will automatically continue to receive it every year. Persons with decreasing independence shouldn't have to reapply for the GIS each year.
In your opinion, could these changes help alleviate the poverty you described?