My comment about the debate over poverty lines being a diversion was based on having appeared before committees like this for more than 20 years and seeing, basically, much more debate about what we mean by poverty than debate about what programs could be put in place to improve the well-being of seniors.
For that group of senior single women in Quebec, those are federal programs, the OAS and GIS. You're right, you have to be accountable. But if I were to argue that we should increase the GIS to help that woman, I'm sure I would be asked how much that is going to cost and told that we can't afford it.
The GIS program costs $5 billion or $6 billion in total. The cost of subsidizing the pension incomes and the RRSP incomes of people who will never be in need is measured in the $20 billion range. For every dollar we give to a poor senior--I can document this--we spend four or five public dollars through the tax system subsidizing the incomes of people who will never be needy. I don't understand why every single time I talk about how we could improve the well-being of low-income people who are needy I get questions about the cost, when it's so easy for us to bring in pension splitting, increased age credits, and increased pension credits for people who are not needy and never will be.