I just want to make a couple of comments after listening to Mr. Bajwa a little bit. I'll make my comments, and then he can comment on them if he wants to.
What you're talking about is an issue that would be of importance to folks in my community too. I have a community with a significant Indo-Canadian population.
The comment I want to make is that our social programs have been established and have been invested in for many years by Canadians, and I guess for all Canadians, in a sense. The rules that are in place allow us to continue, to some extent.... We have a fairly generous immigration policy in this country, probably the most generous in the world.
Now, in line with Ms. Charlton's comments in terms of the numbers, I would imagine that if you were to calculate the number of people in Canada right now who are over 65 and who have been here for fewer than 10 years, it would be a very significant number of people who would qualify for this benefit if we were to change those rules. To this point, every single one of those people has chosen to come here because Canada, in my mind, and I would say in the minds of everybody in this room, is the greatest country in the world. It really is. There are lots of reasons for people to come to Canada.
In this global community we're living in, we're trying very hard, the government's trying very hard, to establish these agreements--I touched before on the 50 social security agreements, more than any other country--with more and more countries. And it's incumbent, as we talked about yesterday, on the governments in countries like India and China to bring their rules in line so we can actually establish agreements with those countries as well. I think it is important.
I want to talk about the concept of sponsored immigration, in that it's something that actually allows seniors who have never paid a cent in Canadian tax to come here and join their families who agree to support them. I mean, the whole concept of sponsored immigration is about balance and fairness and, at the same time, our goals. Something that's incredibly important to me and the people in my community is to bring families together and allow families to be together. Obviously I know that in the Indo-Canadian community it's very important, and I see lots of situations with grandparents and several generations of family living within the same household, and I see the tightness of those families. That is enormously important, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that.
I think that with the numbers we're talking about, the costs we're talking about, it would be a tremendously expensive venture to go down a road of changing the system on the GIS side to make the changes you're discussing here. I'd be interested in meeting with your organization at some point to discuss it one on one, for sure.
Those are my comments. I don't want to go down a road that would ever see us impact on the ability to bring those families together because of costs or anything like that. So I'd like to get your comments on that, if I could.