Finance committee  I think simplification is important. To the degree that we are now already means-testing OAS and GIS, but very differently, why would we not rethink it as to what we are trying to do with this piece of public pension support? Why don't we rethink who we're targeting and what's th

Finance committee  Then add the TFSAs—

Finance committee  —which create another level of complication, in the sense that you pay the tax up front and you don't pay the tax later, and the income from that is not related to whether you get GIS or not. So it's hugely complex—all these pieces....

Finance committee  Well, right now if you have this piece that you can take a low tax rate on today, not pay taxes on later, and have it not impact the eligibility for OAS and GIS—

Finance committee  —clearly it makes a lot of sense for most people to go the TFSA route. Now, if you create a PRPP system that doesn't allow you to go into TFSAs.... It's complex, right? Or should we in fact allow the PRPP system to use the TFSA instrument, if you like it so much?

Finance committee  I'll bring up a somewhat different issue. You have something like $300 billion or $400 billion of RRSP money in retail mutual funds. Those are currently being charged 2% plus, in terms of fees. In a low-return environment, it doesn't work. To me, a lot of these technical things

Finance committee  Inertia is a fundamental human trait. Therefore, if people have to do something actively to make something happen, x% won't do it. So if you flip that around.... I had mentioned auto-enrolment earlier in terms of PRPPs as being essential to making that program work.

Finance committee  No, it's not.

Finance committee  No, the employer has to enrol the employees into the plan. That means...you know, that's automatic enrolment that has force. If you leave it voluntary for employers as to whether they sign up for this or not, you're going to leave a large gap of workers out of the game.

Finance committee  The most interesting example may be Sweden. They really took their whole system apart about 10 years ago and kind of put it back together based on what they saw going forward. They call it a notional DC system—defined contribution system—which basically means that everybody in th

Finance committee  What I like about the OAS change, and Arthur Sweetman mentioned the point, is the ability to choose when you start taking it. And it is actuarially fair. If you wait three or four years, the amount is adjusted for the reality that you waited three or four years to take it. I thin

Finance committee  I think there is the question of the absolute amount of taxes that you are willing to allocate to this area. Then there's a distribution effect of how you use that money. The example that I used, if we want to be more frugal, if you like, from a fiscal sustainability point of vi

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I haven't done the technical modelling, but if you do it at a high enough level, and you do it deductively.... I think the projection was that if you didn't do anything with respect to OAS, it would go from 2.5% of GDP to 3.3% of GDP. If you make these changes, obviously you're g

Finance committee  Absolutely, and in fact, that's one of the things I said, but obviously I didn't say it well. I think we're all agreed that the best systems, such as the Swedish system, which Mr. Sweetman mentioned..... It's a smaller country, with six million people versus 33 million. It's al