Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone.
Last but not least, I want to put it on the record that I take tremendous pride in some of the measures the government has taken. When talking about statistics, I'm going to put on the table statistics from Stats Canada and the OECD that show we have one of the lowest rates of poverty among 33 OECD countries. We're at around 5%. We still have to do more, absolutely, but at no time in the history of this country have we ever been at this low rate of poverty in seniors.
I want to put on the record that Australia is at 27%, the United States is at 24%, and the United Kingdom is at 10%. I think we have to take these measures that the Conservative government has put forward, embrace some of them, and improve on them. Taxing our seniors more with a GST hike, which is proposed by the official opposition, and corporate tax increases that are going to be downloaded onto consumers who are seniors could very likely put many more of our seniors right back into poverty. This government's not prepared to do that. I appreciate the suggestions you've made that do not look at broad-based tax increases, like a GST hike, etc.
I just wanted to put on the record that I appreciate what you're saying, but we should take some pride in being at the very lowest rate in Canadian history. That said, we haven't addressed something that was in the budget, and I want your feedback on it.
We put some funding to support the new community-integrated palliative care initiative. Ms. Henningsen and Ms. McAlister, I suspect that reflects on your areas of expertise. Would you comment on that? Is it well received? Is it something that will help?