That's a lot. Thank you very much, Helena.
In polls, 70% of the population of Canada support pension splitting. That goes way beyond the people who are eligible. In fact, I think the poll reported that it was the most popular legislation that had been put forward or announced since before Chrétien.
In terms of where the support came, I don't understand politics that well; I confess to that. That's why I can be so non-partisan. You'll forgive me. There hasn't been one politician I've talked to on a one-to-one basis who didn't agree with pension splitting. In October 2005 I had a conversation with Paul Martin. He set up a meeting with Tony Ianno, and we were well on the way to getting this discussion going when somebody called an election. I don't know where the Liberals stand today. It's very difficult to know, but I have had personal calls. I have had calls from Jim Peterson, for instance, saying the Liberal Party supports this. It's hard for me to know exactly how that's happening, but I trust that it's happening, because today there's going to be a vote.
The idea of doing a gender-based thing appeals to me. It makes sense, because it corrects for some wrongs over the years.
What I'm saying in some of my stuff has not been necessarily a consensus, even at CARP, because they had a little trouble with reverse discrimination. I don't have that problem—and they can't fire me because I'm a volunteer. There would be some discussion, as there will be, I suspect, in the rest of society, but the one thing they will do is put that force, 400,000 strong, behind the idea of doing seminars and getting people out. They have a magazine that's read by one million people, most of whom are people who are 50-plus. So that could be the focus, and they could take this on.
I've talked to financial institutions, who would be only too pleased to get involved in these seminars—for somewhat their own purposes, of course, but they're pleased to do that.
You mentioned the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. I trust that's not an unfamiliar name to you, but I was the founding president back in 1986. And yes, Paul Martin was on that board, and Murray Koffler, Edward Bronfman, and quite a few others you'd recognize. A basic thrust of that was to bring economic development to native people. On reserve was the primary target, but off reserve as well. I found—if we had time to discuss—that the potential in there for females was incredible. For one thing, I found it much easier to get them to move.