I have a couple of comments.
I happen to know that there are about 150,000 people on welfare in Canada who are 55 to 64. I just have a habit of remembering numbers. We know that most of them are probably not going to bounce back into a job. The welfare regulations will strip them of any assets and any hope of improving their circumstances, so this is probably, I would say, serving no useful purpose.
I mentioned in my presentation, and I'll come back to it, that there's a widow's allowance program, which is for people who are 60 to 64 who meet an income criterion, and it gives them about $13,000 a year. It's not a lot of money, but it is perhaps double what they would get on welfare.
There are about 20,000 or so people getting the widow's allowance. There are about 120,000 people, single people on their own, who meet the income criterion for the widow's allowance but who don't happen to be widowed. There has been a Supreme Court challenge of the widow's allowance on the grounds of marital status discrimination. There's a perfect example of what you're talking about. The federal government is already giving it to widows but not to single, divorced, or separated people. Those people, if they're on welfare in Ontario, would be eligible for $6,000 a year, serving no useful purpose.
I know that the Caledon Institute published a paper recently on the cost of making the widow's allowance broader. So there are some papers out there, and there's a precedent with the widow's allowance.