It's an interesting age group in the sense that federal and provincial supports are relatively strong for seniors, in particular. We have established basic incomes across the country of over $16,000 to $19,000, depending on the province, which is relatively high. The same is somewhat true for families with children, using the Canada child benefit as well as provincial top-ups.
But there exists one group of people—those who don't have children, who are not seniors, and who are not working and therefore cannot access the Canada workers benefit. Again, if you've worked hard all of your life and you've become injured, or your spouse has become injured and you can't work because you're caring for them, or you just can't work, there are essentially no supports, outside of social assistance.
There are a couple of approaches that we could take to try to better create transfers for that group. One is some sort of more universal top-up, which is something we've examined in our alternative budget, that would sit on top of the GST and be worth about $1,800, which would decrease fairly rapidly with income.
Another approach would be to decrease the age of eligibility for important programs such as the guaranteed income supplement and old age security, which currently start at age 65. For the bottom 20% of the population, they actually see their incomes rise substantially as they reach the age of 65, because they can access those programs. If those programs were available earlier, we would lower poverty rates, particularly for folks who can't work and have no other means of support outside of social assistance.