Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Carney and Mr. Macklem, for being here today.
Our government has acted very responsibly to ensure that our social programs are going to be there for our citizens when they need them. So I want to take a look down the demographic tunnel, if you will. That light that we see, which is getting brighter, is not the end of the tunnel but a freight train heading towards us. All level-headed people can't ignore the empirical evidence that our population is aging, and that there are going to be fewer and fewer workers to sustain the people who are going to be 65 years and over, as we move forward.
When the Old Age Security Act was brought in, in 1952, there were roughly nine workers for every one who was in retirement. In the seventies that went to seven to one; today it's four to one; and twenty years from now it will be two to one. Life expectancy has gone up. Our birth rate has gone down. We have taken, I think, a very prudent approach when it comes to the sustainability of our old age security system.
I'll just put my question out and you can take all the necessary time you need to answer. I just want to quote Deputy Governor Boivin, who spoke to the very august Economic Club of Canada just a few weeks ago. He identified three points of pressure resulting from our aging population. He said:
A smaller fraction of the population will be working and contributing to public revenues, and more people will be depending on their pensions, either public or private, to maintain their standard of living. Further, citizens require increased health care as they grow older, which will also place pressure on the public purse—fewer resources, more demand.
Could you please comment on all of that?