Status of Women committee  I agree that there needs to be some kind of summit or consultation at which all the stakeholders are present--not just the people who sponsor pension plans, but unions, seniors, and everybody who has an interest in this. We all have an interest in it. It is urgent. The so-called

Status of Women committee  It would if it were done as you describe. There are some options. For example, you could increase the contributory earnings and raise that level from $46,000 to a much higher level.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I think it would be, roughly. The CLC has calculated it. I don't remember exactly what it was; it wasn't exactly double, but it was certainly increasing.

Status of Women committee  There are some minor variations--for example, in the benefits for dependent children of contributors, and so on--but basically the two plans are the same. Quebec's plan is administered in Quebec. The CPP is a federal-provincial thing, and in fact Quebec has a vote on changes to t

Status of Women committee  It think it is $46,000.

Status of Women committee  There are a couple of other things. In Ontario, there's a Pension Benefits Guarantee Fund. If an employer goes bankrupt, the fund guarantees the pensions of workers up to an amount of $1,000 a month. A recent commission in Ontario recommended that that be increased to $2,500 a mo

Status of Women committee  If only it were true.

Status of Women committee  I just finished writing a paper on women and poverty and the recession that looks at the roots of women's poverty. There a whole bunch of them: women's wages are lower, there's no child care, their access to training is lower, the welfare rates are too low, women who are single p

Status of Women committee  It would be impossible to give you a dollar figure, but I think it should be at least up to the poverty level. At the moment, your mother—to use the example you gave—who didn't work outside the home and didn't earn a CPP pension, would still be entitled to old age security in her

Status of Women committee  Currently the employers pay--

Status of Women committee  The current contribution rate is 9.9% of earnings, half of which is paid by the employer and half by the employee. That rate would increase; half of it would be paid by the employer and half by the employee. It comes out of earnings. Certainly it's taken into account when the emp

Status of Women committee  Yes. The point is that it's a percentage of your earnings. It's not simply doubling a flat-rate benefit. What you get at the end is a percentage of the earnings that you've contributed over the years that you were in the plan. So instead of getting 25% of your average annual earn

Status of Women committee  I just want to respond to that. What the federal Minister of Finance was referring to was consultations he had on the proposed changes to federally regulated plans, which make up only 7% of workplace pension plans in Canada. He proposed changes to those plans and then he went an

Status of Women committee  I mentioned the number of people who are employed in so-called non-standard jobs, the kind that you've just outlined—contract work, temporary work, and so on. As I said, 40% of women's jobs are now those kinds of jobs, compared with 30% of men's jobs. Most of those jobs have inst

Status of Women committee  I think that's probably a significant difference there. There are other bits that you could tweak, for example, by basing it on a much higher level of earnings than is now the case.