Finance committee  We can't measure this in one year. The success and failure of the PRPP tool is going to need to be measured over several years. It's going to be a slow build. The first step will be converting a lot of the group RRSPs to PRPPs. Beyond that, there will be expansion of coverage. Our estimate, though, is that it will be a slow build.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Not only would the small-business owner struggle to do that, but the employee who is at that modest level of income may find himself or herself out of work altogether if there were a payroll tax increase on the employer.

Finance committee  —have challenges putting aside additional money.

Finance committee  The premium increases that one would require to do the same, whether in the CPP or PRPP, would be the same: Canadians would have to dig deep and find the money or employers would have to dig deep and find the money. Unless government itself, through the personal income tax system or other means, is going to start to directly fund into a pension vehicle, I don't....

Finance committee  I'll make one other very brief point. One of the tools through which the PRPP will help, compared with the other options that exist today, is that the government has also proposed that under the Income Tax Act, PRPP contributions be exempt for an employer from payroll taxes. Right now, if an employer puts money into a group RRSP, he or she pays about 25% more than that because they have to pay the payroll taxes—CPP, EI, workers' compensation rates—on top of the contribution.

Finance committee  Investment returns went way down, and then they came up. They have not returned to their previous levels, but they have rebounded to a large extent.

Finance committee  The challenge is that there's no sum total of all the public sector pension liabilities that exist across Canada, but they are massive. For the City of Regina right now to get its public sector pension plan back on track in order for civil servants to get what they are expected to get, the contributions have to be matched at 45%—22.5% by taxpayers and 22.5% by the employees themselves.

Finance committee  I have to tell you, for the main civil service pension right now, for every dollar the individual worker puts in, taxpayers put in two. That's what you would need to do to give private sector Canadians the opportunity to match what the civil servants have right now. Most Canadians, 80% of our members, have nothing.

Finance committee  The quick answer is that they won't, but they're not going to have that money, whether it's a CPP premium increase, a PRPP that is put in place, or a new rule on the RRSP. The challenge is that most Canadians—

Finance committee  Absolutely. We like the combination of retirement savings tools we have. We feel that this will be an additional one. I think there's a great deal of interest. We have to keep in mind that there's a brewing shortage of labour, particularly in your part of the world, Mr. Jean. We have a large number of small firms desperate to hang on to their staff.

Finance committee  We have to worry about disposable income on both sides of the ledger: one, when you're earning and having to make the contributions to your pension, and then two, the disposable income you might have when you retire. The CLC's plan to increase the Canada Pension Plan premiums by 60% to double the benefit would mean that each Canadian would have to pay up to $1,300 a year more in CPP premiums, and each employer, for every employee at the maximum amount, would have to pay $1,300 more per year in CPP premiums.

Finance committee  It's put back in 40 years later—that's right. This is the difficult math we have to do.

Finance committee  It's an important point. I think the best thing governments can do is to increase disclosure. If we had very simple ways to disclose management fees so those who struggle to understand the behind-the-scenes machinations can see at a glance the fees they are paying, that would be an important measure.

Finance committee  I just have a couple of quick points on this. First, we like your idea very much, Mr. Brison. Our members do—77% of our members favour the option of a voluntary add-on to the CPP. We like that proposal. It certainly fits the two criteria that we've set, voluntary and low cost.