Madam Speaker, I want to take up a certain point in this debate that I do not think has got quite enough attention.
We often talk about the fact that the proposed CPP increase would not do a lot for seniors today, and that is likely true. It is in the nature of the plan. Pensions plans are about building for the future, and if we want to do something for seniors today, there are other things we can and should do, but the fact that the CPP would really only benefit people 40 years from now is just saying that it would benefit the young people who are entering the workforce today. I do not see that as a vice of the proposed increase at all.
Though there are some problems with the bill, I want to take a moment to put on the record that with the increases to the CPP, the virtue of the bill is that for young people who are facing a different work environment than my parents did and, frankly, than my grandparents did, the CPP has a lot to offer.
It has a lot to offer in a couple of ways. One, and I think the most important one, is the portability of the plan and the fact that it goes from employer to employer. No matter what province an individual is working in, they and their employer will continue to pay into the CPP, and that is a cumulative benefit that they will receive over their entire life.
I think there is real advantage to that in a labour market that we know is changing and is causing young people today, first, to have trouble finding work in the first place. When they do, it is not long-term, permanent work. Young people today will not only be changing employers many times, but will likely change careers many times.
The idea was that an individual would find a company pension. That was part of the three pillars of retirement savings planning when CPP was brought in. People would have a public pension, a company pension and their private savings, which were meant to represent only a third of what they would need to retire, because people at that time recognized that asking people to save for the entirety of their retirement was in all likelihood setting the bar too high.
The company pension was meant to be a pillar. We no longer have that. Even if some young Canadians today are lucky enough to get hired by a company that does offer some kind of pension scheme, it is very unlikely they will stay with that employer for 25 or 30 years. That means it will be hard for them to receive the full benefit of that pension plan.
Even if they are employed for 20 or 30 years by a couple of different employers with their own versions of retirement plans, whether some kind of defined benefit plan, although those are disappearing very quickly, or different defined contributions plans or pooled RRSPs or whatever the mechanism is, in order for them to receive their retirement benefit and their income, they will have to be in touch with and interacting with multiple financial institutions and plans to cobble together that income that at one time would have come from one comprehensive company plan and the CPP.
The CPP can step in to play an important role for young people who are struggling to find and keep employment and who would like to retire one day. The fact they are working on contract and are not guaranteed work past eight months, or a year or two years, does not mean they want to keep doing that for the rest of their lives. In fact, I submit that many of them would be very happy to sign on with a company that promised them long-term employment with good benefits and a pension plan that they felt they could rely on.
That is a really important benefit. The cost or the direct financial details aside, this is a good way for young people facing a very challenging labour market to be able to put together some kind of pension plan that provides a defined benefit. In the private sector, defined benefit plans are disappearing. It seems another one disappears every day, but it is important, if an individual wants to be able to plan for their retirement, to have a sense of how much income they will have.
We know from the experience of 2008 that the situation can change very quickly when all of the risk is put on the individual and the market goes south, for reasons beyond the control of any one particular Canadian. It means that their retirement savings can disappear overnight.
The retirement savings that were kept by the Canada pension plan did not disappear overnight. If they are like most Canadians, who unfortunately had a lot of their retirement savings disappear overnight in the stock market, I think most people would be glad to know that what they did put into the CPP would still be there for them, and gladder still, if that were a more significant percentage of their overall retirement income.
It is a benefit in that it follows people around, and that is important for young workers. It is a benefit to them too in that it provides a kind of core defined benefit around which they can plan the rest of their retirement savings.
We have heard a lot of members talk about the role of individual responsibility and the importance of savings. As a principle, it is impossible to impeach that. It is important for people to take responsibility, but one way they can do that is by making collective decisions and electing governments that have proposed and are implementing a good public pension. I do not see this as government taking away people's money and planning for them. I see this as Canadians making decisions about who to elect, based on platforms that have to do with collective decision-making.
The CPP offers a better retirement alternative than many Canadians would be able to find in the private sector. That is true in part because it shares the risk across all working Canadians. It is true in part because it has some of the lowest administrative fees. It is true in part because it is a fully portable plan. It is also true because one of the deceptions in the position of Conservatives in the House, when it comes to individual savings, is that somehow all Canadians are equal in the access that they enjoy to plans that provide good returns. I do not think anyone who has any knowledge of retirement savings could honestly get up in this place and say it does not matter how much money people have to invest in a mutual fund or with a particular financial planner or adviser to determine what rate of return they get. We know that all they have to do is walk into a bank and they will be told that if they have $25,000 instead of $5,000 they can get a higher interest rate on their savings account. That principle continues to apply, and those returns continue to increase exponentially with the amount of wealth people have.
When it comes to the CPP, all Canadians are treated equally, and their savings dollar goes just as far whether they are saving a bit because they get paid $14 an hour, or a lot because they are they paid $50 an hour. There is a basic issue of fairness. No one is saying that the CPP should be 100% of Canadians' retirement income, but it needs to be an important pillar and there is an important issue of fairness there that needs to be addressed.
Fairness in the CPP is an important principle and it is one of the reasons that we in the NDP have been disappointed that certain provisions instituted by previous Liberal governments, previous Trudeau governments for that matter, in order to ensure fairness for the CPP, are not present in this round of increases for the CPP. I am speaking in particular about dropout provisions for women who have to leave the workforce or decide to leave the workforce because they want to spend time with their children and do not want those years counted toward their overall benefit because that would punish them in terms of the benefit that they get out of the CPP. Likewise, I am speaking about people with disabilities who also may have to take time out of the workforce and do not want those years counted toward their overall benefit because they did not earn very much in those years, obviously, if they were not working to their full potential. That is a principle of fairness that traditionally had been recognized by Liberals, and it has been unfortunate to see that the current Liberals refuse to recognize that principle of fairness in the CPP.
My colleague from Hamilton Mountain has done a great job of identifying what I hope was an oversight by the Liberals. If it was not an oversight, that is even worse. If it was an oversight, I do not think the Liberals have handled it very well because what they should have done was admit that they made a mistake, that they missed that, and made a commitment to return to the table and secure the appropriate changes before ramming this bill through. Instead, they decided to use time allocation hoping they could bust it through before Canadians started paying attention. I think that is shameful, and I was sad to see it. I do want to commend, once again, my colleague from Hamilton Mountain, who identified the problem and offered amendments in committee. When those amendments were not accepted because they have financial implications and the government would need to champion them, the member moved a motion calling on the committee to recommend to the government that it undertake to do that. Even that was shut down. It has been very disappointing to see the Liberals not continue what, until now with the current government, had been a tradition of Liberals' recognizing that basic principle of fairness with respect to the CPP.
