Mr. Milligan is a former classmate.
Kevin, it's good to see you.
On seniors and GIS, I know my colleague Mr. McLeod touched on this, but when we were first elected, one of our promises was to increase the GIS by 10% for the most vulnerable seniors, single seniors. From my understanding, we lifted about 57,000 of those 900,000 recipients out of poverty. Also, we reduced the age of eligibility for OAS and GIS from 67 back to 65, where the previous government had announced that policy change on a foreign trip in Switzerland without any type of consultation. We also enhanced the CPP for future generations and put that in place. Now, in this budget, we've gone in again and looked at the GIS exemption amount.
I'll try to be as succinct as possible.
We brought in also national poverty reduction, which is in our BIA. In thinking of all our policy tools, the Canada child benefit, the Canada training benefit, the Canada workers benefit, a middle-class tax cut for nine million Canadians, and now these measures that we brought in on the GIS, you're an economist, just how powerful are those tools in ensuring that the economic growth that occurs is what's called inclusive economic growth?