Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm at one of those stages where I have way too many notes from these presentations.
I want to thank the folks for the information being provided today.
Ms. Borenstein, I was the one who put the motion about LTD to the House. I've offered our party's support for Mr. Eggleton's bill on it. We'll be moving forward on that as best we can.
Mr. Béland, you were talking about the Canada Pension Plan. The one thing that's happening to some degree today is that we're moving to the point where we're looking at the private side as opposed to the public side. From my perspective, the public side has to become the foundation, and it has to sustain as the bare minimum for people.
My understanding on living in poverty...we heard the figure of 4% a few minutes ago. From Statistics Canada, the figure is 266,000. It is growing, the last I heard, so we had proposed an immediate increase to GIS.
But in talking about the CPP plan, you're probably aware that some of the provinces and the Liberal Party have suggested a supplemental plan to the CPP. We're concerned about that because of administration costs. We've proposed that you take the core assets of CPP and increase those.
The other difference I'm seeing is that the Liberal Party has spoken about it being voluntary. I don't think that will work. We understand that 63% of Canadians have neither a pension nor savings, and there's evidence built into that number that I believe makes it important that whatever we do we build a foundation that is mandatory.
I'd like your response on comparing the two, if you would.