Industry committee  Yes, it is.

Industry committee  It used to be that defined benefit plans and all pension plans were really seen as an element of human resource management, of attraction and retention. Because of the size of defined benefit plans and because of the solvency funding rules that came in during the late eighties an

Industry committee  The percentage has been going down. If you go back maybe ten years or so, everything was some 5% higher than the numbers I've just given you. It went from, say, 35% down to 28% in total. These are ratios. It's something divided by something else; any ratio is that. The actual n

Industry committee  I just wanted to add that the earlier conversation was talking about the other countries, 30 countries and so on. You have to be very careful in looking at those studies to decide whether what's covered is what is in arrears—in other words, the special payments that should have b

Industry committee  I need to clarify that we personally haven't done all this research; we're reading others' reports. I think it's imperative that to answer this question you make sure you pick out what really is covered by all of these other countries, because it's too easy to say that they cover

Industry committee  Certainly from what I've seen, I doubt it very much.

Industry committee  In the private sector, I think it's 28% who are covered by defined benefit and defined contribution or hybrids. For the public sector I've forgotten what the number is; it's probably 85% or something like that.

Industry committee  Yes. Of the 28%, my recollection is that something like 16% was defined benefit, 9% is defined contribution, and 3% is hybrid. I may have the numbers a little bit wrong.

Industry committee  My remarks earlier were predicated on the idea of strengthening the ability of employers to have a balance. Having a balance allows them to put more money into their pension plan over the long term and allows them to keep their companies in business over the long term. What we a

Industry committee  I'll just add to that point. We already have a number of actions taking place across the country. The federal government has already taken action through Bill C-9 and some regulations to enhance the funding of pension plans. We're seeing the same happening in various other jurisd

Industry committee  Thank you. I'm the Canadian retirement innovation leader with Towers Watson, a global consulting firm. My colleague is Karen Figueiredo, who is the Canadian leader of the investment consulting practice. We're both actuaries with pension expertise. Our firm has already provided