I don't think I said this would not happen in business. I think what I said was, with the incentives that are in place now, there's not a great financial penalty to the Canada Pension Plan or to the federal treasury when people are not paid. So the incentive is to not address the take-up issue. So I don't think I said it would not happen in business. I'm quite sure these things happen in businesses all the time, as well. All I was really saying was that the financial incentive in place now is to not address the issue.
The best part of the bill is not having to reapply for GIS, and that in the long run will help immensely with the GIS issue. But the bill does nothing about CPP.
The thing I was trying to encourage was to say that I don't believe you need any legislation for the officials to actually do what Quebec does and contact people and make sure they're signed up. Are you telling me that they need approval from the provinces to actually become proactive and contact people? I don't know. Perhaps. There's nothing in the legislation.
The comments I made were partly out of the fact that you have to realize that this started seven years ago with the GIS story, and it has now been seven years of talking about take-up and retroactivity. We have this piece of legislation, which is the first piece of legislation in seven years, that will address the issue of take-up and retroactivity, and to my mind, it doesn't address the issue of the Canada Pension Plan at all.
I'm being told this is one step forward and we'll wait for another. When's the next opportunity going to be? Is it in another seven years? Most of the people I've helped to get their benefits are dead. I'm telling you absolutely the truth. Most of the people I've helped get their benefits are dead. Most of them are in their late eighties and nineties. So when I look at this, it is a small step forward, I'll acknowledge exactly, on the reapplication for GIS—absolutely—but to my mind, it's so minimal.
We found out that two-thirds of the people who get GIS are women, and 80% of the people who were not getting their GIS because they were unaware of it were women. The vast majority of these people are women and the vast majority are very old.