Mr. Speaker, I would point out that it might be prudent for my hon. colleague to read the NDP platform from the last election because pensions and seniors were the focus of it. New Democrats spent a great deal of time analyzing the situation with seniors and proposed some very important things, like better long-term care, home care, affordable housing and CPP reform. There needs to be CPP reform in the long term, but for now we need an immediate GIS increase because the reality is that a quarter of a million seniors live below the poverty line.
I would ask the member for her opinion on income splitting of pensions. One of the things the government ballyhoos is pension splitting. The problem is while it sounds very good on the surface, for seniors who are single, mostly women, income splitting is no solution at all. Once again, the government has come up with half measures like its paltry $300 million, when what is needed is $700 million, and income splitting that does not help seniors who are single.