To make sure we're not double counting, CUPE's 600,000 members are affiliated to the Canadian Labour Congress, so between us we're speaking...we generally see eye to eye on most major policy issues.
With respect to the guaranteed income supplement, I think there are two things that are kind of true simultaneously that I think members need to bear in mind. When you look at Canada in an international context, we've done very well with respect to rates of low income amongst the current retirees, and it really is because the guaranteed income supplement makes a very real difference to a lot of people. Actually, one in three people collecting old age security also qualify for some money from the guaranteed income supplement, and I think it has been a very effective anti-poverty program.
That said, if you added 10% to the poverty line, the LICO line, we would have high rates of low income amongst the elderly. So the GIS actually raises a lot of people to or very near the poverty line, and it makes a huge difference to them. I quoted before the number I got from Statistics Canada about a year ago. The total amount by which the incomes of the elderly in Canada fell below the poverty line, the LICO after-tax line, in 2007 was under a billion dollars. So it wouldn't actually cost a lot of money to abolish poverty amongst seniors if you define it by pushing over that line.
We actually advocate increasing the GIS by 15%, which would be more than a billion dollars, but I think it's an affordable amount. In all honesty, if we don't move forward on pension reform, that amount that goes to the GIS is going to increase over time. One of our key arguments, really, for expanding the Canada Pension Plan over time is that it's really only by giving people a decent income and retirement in the future for people in their thirties and forties now that we'll stop them falling into low incomes in the future.
So we need that increase in GIS now, I think. Longer term, we need the increase in the Canada Pension Plan to really deal more pre-emptively with the problem of low incomes in old age.