Status of Women committee  It becomes part of the tax discussion as well, as I understand it. Does it not?

Status of Women committee  I'm going to see if Monsieur Dussault wants to comment on this because of other discussions he has had. I'm not the expert on this. The expert has left to deal with child care and also to continue contributing to the pension plans for all of us. What we're saying is, again, this

Status of Women committee  There hasn't been a summit. What there has been is a series of discussions across the country. We're saying it's time for us as a society to get together and have a summit around the question of pensions, to be able to deal with how we are going to improve the retirement securi

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, it's not enough.

Status of Women committee  I think our recommendations are right there, in terms of page 4. It reads: We propose to phase in a doubling of the proportion of average earnings replaced by CPP from 25% to 50% over seven to ten years to $1,635 per month, financed by a modest increase.... So it's for both w

Status of Women committee  I think Monsieur Dussault has some details. But the reality here, folks, is that if the generation now isn't prepared to support the generation who went before us, and there are a lot of women who, for a number of reasons, aren't getting any kind of a pension plan.... I thought

Status of Women committee  I would just ask that Joel have a chance to respond to some things as well, because he has child care responsibilities to take care of, so he won't be able to be with us for the whole time. I want to make sure he has an opportunity to respond to part of the question you asked.

Status of Women committee  I think a lot of us are talking about the social determinants of health. Sometimes it's too easy to say, “Oh well, it's poverty. It's unfortunate, but it's over there.” But there's a whole bunch of interconnections as well. My background, as some of you know, is as a social work

Status of Women committee  We have to look at what the tax breaks are because of people investing in RRSPs. I believe the figure is about $18 billion provincially and federally. What's the cost to us to do it that way? Also, we should be realizing that for people who may have made some investments in RRS

Status of Women committee  On page 4 of our document, the first point says “financed by a modest increase in worker and employer premiums which would be fair for lower paid workers”. If you need it in writing, it's there in writing.

Status of Women committee  Oui, nous sommes d'accord. This comes into so many places, whether it's child care, employment insurance, parental rights, and all that sort of stuff. We look fondly to Quebec and say since they brought in $7-a-day child care, since they provide for extra parental benefits, since

Status of Women committee  Yes, I think you asked the question of us as well, the question of the self-employed. It is our understanding that yes, the self-employed are covered. But again, as Monsieur Dussault has pointed out, it's on the basis of declared earnings. I'm glad that Mr. Braniff raised the qu

Status of Women committee  Yes, and I apologize. I think what we're looking for is this. We don't want to have a discussion about people who are concerned about pensions and retirement over here while governments are having discussions over there. There's no point in federal, provincial, and territorial g

Status of Women committee  There you go. There's lots of time for questions. C'est bien.

Status of Women committee  Thank you. You've certainly set the bar for all of us. Thank you very much for the invitation to be here. We've handed out two documents. I'll be referring mostly to the single page, but you also have a more detailed document beside it. With me is Joel Harden, who works in our