Part of the problem--getting back to what Judy was saying about a holistic point of view--is that we believe the public pension system in its entirety needs to be reviewed, and reformed and increased.
For example, we're sitting on a powder keg. Immigrants who come to this country have to be here 40 continuous years before they're allowed to get old age security. We have a lot of immigrants who have come here much older than that, and that's something that I think really has to be reviewed, because as those people get to be 65 years of age, they're going to fall into the category that you've been talking about. So we're looking at something in the future, but it's those kinds of elements within our current public pension system that need to be properly attuned to the realities we're faced with.
The guaranteed income supplement is another one, because while there has been an increase in the guaranteed income supplement--the first in about 20 years--the amounts, in actual fact, are totally minimal. About one-third of our citizens live below the poverty line. Our public pension system--old age security, guaranteed income supplement, and some of them may get a bit of CPP, say, from a spouse or someone--guarantees that they will not live in dire poverty, but they will not live above the low-income cut-off line. So we have to review the entire system that exists.
Secondly, we have been advocating and in fact in the former government the Minister of State responsible for seniors advocated a band above the low-income cut-off line that seniors could receive through working, without endangering the guaranteed income supplement. I believe the band that had been recommended was around $2,000 or $3,000, and we said the same. It's not to force people to work, but if they have to work to augment their income, they should not lose the benefits they have--and they very well might, because if they get money above the low-income cut-off line, they lose fifty cents for every dollar they get.
So our system is not designed to meet the kinds of challenges you're talking about, and those challenges won't go away in the future, because a lot of people work part-time on an almost full-time basis, so they don't have pensions. All they will be dependent on is the public pension system. So we're hopeful that when this committee is established by the Senate it will look at the kinds of issues you're talking about as part of the overall picture that has to be reviewed in the country.