Statistically, we don't know. I can give you some figures, but I want to caution everyone that we don't know the details of this.
According to Statistics Canada's post-censal data in the participation and activity limitation survey, or PALS, 800,000 people in 2006 identified themselves as having a severe visual impairment. That's 800,000 people over the age of 15.
Now, if we take CNIB's statistics on the number of people we have, 65% of our clients are over the age of 70. Again, this is quick and dirty, but because vision loss, as we know, is age related, maybe 50% of the 800,000 are over 65 or over 75, which means we're talking about 400,000 people. Or we'll say it's that amount just in the interests of discussion.
Right now 108,000 people are registered with CNIB. I don't believe in panicking or just throwing figures around, so we don't know if there are 300,000, or 400,000, or even 700,000 more people out there who need to be getting CNIB services. I suspect that's not the case. But as we all know, as everyone in this room is mentioning, there is a gap between the people who are getting services and the people who could benefit from them but are not getting services.
So is that number big? I don't know--but it could be.