Mr. Speaker, on the issue of the GIS, let me be very clear. We made it automatic enrolment a month ago. That has been done and we did it for a very good reason. We care about seniors and we know that for seniors, particularly in rural communities and those who have linguistic challenges and perhaps come from different cultures, their access to government services is inhibited. We knew that in order to help seniors, we needed to make that enrolment automatic and so we have done that. We did it without being asked by the NDP.
On the other issues that were raised, I have no problem being pushed to do more for low-income Canadians and for Canadians who fall below the poverty line. I support the NDP and I have worked with colleagues across the House to make sure that poverty is sustained as a critical focus of this government. Therefore, let me tell members what we have done without being asked and what we intend to do before we are asked.
Fundamentally, the most important thing we have done in this term of government is the Canada child benefit. The Canada child benefit supports children in this country by supporting their families and 65% of the families who receive the maximum CCB are households led by single parents. Part of the reason we brought in gender-based budgeting and gender-based analysis to our economic policies was to make sure that when we made expenditures not only did we help the intended targets of support, but we broadened that support to make sure that women were also helped simultaneously. We do more than one thing with these sorts of investments. We do not just lift children out of poverty. We lift women in this country out of poverty and with them the families that they often lead as single parents.
That single government policy has lifted 40% of children living in poverty in this country out of poverty. Again, we did not wait to be asked how to do this, we did it.
Another initiative that is critical to what has gone on in terms of our approach to dealing with poverty was the reform of the CPP and the enhancement to the GIS. What we are slowly starting to see is a series of programs that not only target low-income Canadians, but also make sure we understand the impact poverty has on racialized communities, the role that anti-black racism has on poverty in this country, the role that gender has on poverty in this country. Our programs not only deal with poverty as a general issue, but we target specific groups in specific ways to make sure those hardest hit by poverty are lifted out of poverty the quickest.
We have more work to be done and as I said, I have no problem being pushed to be more proactive, more progressive, and more successful in alleviating poverty. I have no problem, but to be told we are not doing things and to not acknowledge what great steps have been made is just wilfully partisan.
I will give another example. The national housing strategy has been criticized because it is too long. The only way to get into a systemic transformation of the housing policy in this country is not to do one- and two-year programs as promised by the party opposite during their campaign platform, a short four-year program. The only way to do it and the way every municipality, every housing activist, every homeless person, every single person in the sector says is the right way to do it is to do a multi-year program. As we build the multi-year program, by sheer force of nature as we add new housing, the program must go. We have heard criticism that the program is back-end loaded. Of course it is back-end loaded.
If I build 100 new houses in a riding this year and 100 more the year after that, and 100 more the year after that, after three years I do not have 300 units of housing. I have 100, then 200, then 300. I have 600 units of housing. We build housing systems in a back-end loaded multi-year way. That is exactly what we have done.
However, we have done something else as part of this process. We have also proposed for the first time ever, as part of the first national housing strategy, a Canada housing benefit. If the party opposite wants to know what the next big move to eliminate poverty in this country is, it is the Canada housing benefit, which will subsidize people and give them choices as to where they live and help subsidize them on core housing needs and put them in a position where they can choose to locate near a school, jobs, and family—