Thank you, Chair.
Good afternoon to my colleagues, and good afternoon, Minister Schulte. It's great to have you back at HUMA again.
I want to just very quickly take exception to MP Gazan's comments on the $17.65 a month for seniors. That is absolutely not accurate. We gave a $300 payment to seniors receiving the OAS. If you get the GIS, you get an additional $200. Then there's the GST return, which would actually equal almost $100 a month, as a top-up for seniors, not $17.65. Again, I wanted to clarify that.
I had a 66-year-old senior in my office this afternoon, Minister. She was exceptionally grateful for what we have done as a government. She's a low-income single senior. She was obviously thrilled with the 10% increase that we gave seniors right off the bat in 2015. She was also thrilled that we were in government, because obviously the Conservatives were going to up the age of OAS to 67 years old. She wouldn't have even been eligible for anything if the Conservative government was still in power, so she was very appreciative.
We talked about the benefits we've given. We also talked about the additional 10% for OAS for seniors over 75. Obviously she's not there yet, but she certainly understood the reasons why.
I want you to comment on the things we've done and how all of those things added together make big differences for seniors in making ends meet. I'm wondering if you could give me your thoughts and comments on that.