We have to first recognize that the programs we have for aged people in the form of old age security and GIS are working. We have registered pension plans and programs that match funds there. We have the same thing we're building for children. We have a base child tax benefit and a national child benefit supplement. We also have registered programs and matching programs.
When we look at working-age adults, which is where we're really missing out, we have non-refundable credits in many places, boutique credits, programs that don't work well with each other. So I think at the very start of a federal poverty reduction act, obviously it should make a commitment, it should have sound principles, as the Quebec and Ontario plans do, but it should also include targets and measures, as Ontario's plan has done, and then move from there to put in a plan that actually looks to harness and marshal the income security programs we already have, to try to do for working-age adults what we are in the process of doing for children and what we've already done for aged people in Canada.
We should make something out of the current EI programs we have that don't mesh well with social assistance, and realize that we've written down those programs over the last 15 years and don't have the safety net we once had. I think that would be one of the first orders of business, to try to talk about what sort of base benefit we would start having at the federal level that would actually help working-age adults. It would do so, I think, by starting off as a first order of business to change a lot of the non-refundable tax credits into refundable base credits.